Sean Scully, Walls of Aran Hand signed and inscribed by BOTH Sean Scully and Colm Toibin, 2007

Sean Scully

Walls of Aran (Hand signed and inscribed by BOTH Sean Scully and Colm Toibin), 2007

Hardback monograph with book jacket

Hand signed and personally inscribed to Kevin by BOTH Sean Scully and Colm Toibin

9 1/2 × 10 1/2 × 1 inches

Signed in ink by Sean Scully on the title page, and signed in ink by Colm Toibin on the half title page, and inscribed to Kevin - the present owner - at a special poetry reading on September 26, 2013, at the Drawing Center in NY, so provenance is direct.

Inscription reads:
To Kevin
Sean Scully

For Kevin
with ... wishes
Colm Toibin

Publisher's blurb:
Sean Scully's photographs, with their horizontal and vertical shards of limestone, echo his painted work, revealing a creative process expressed through abstract shapes.

Sean Scully is one of today's most esteemed painters, whose familiar signature style of lines or bands of color is instantly recognizable. Scully is also an accomplished photographer, his eye drawn in particular to architectural shapes that have clear affinities with his painted work.

During the summer of 2005, he spent time on the remote Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland, photographing the ancient dry-stone walls that criss-cross the stark and barren landscape. This book brings together for the first time his sensitive images, revealing the unexpected yet monumental beauty of these centuries-old structures that meander across the windswept and rocky islands. In their form and spirit, the photographs shed light on Scully's own sensibilities as an artist. They also capture the stillness and serenity of this rugged, timeless place on the edge of Europe.

An evocative text by the award-winning Irish writer Colm Tóibín conveys the mysterious beauty of the three Aran Islands. 75 duotone photographs.

Book information:
Publisher: ‎ Thames and Hudson (18 October 2007)
English; Hardcover: ‎ 128 pages with 75 duotone photographs

About Sean Scully:
Sean Scully is one of the most important painters of his generation, whose work is held in major museum collections around the world. While known primarily for his large-scale abstract paintings, comprised of vertical and horizontal bands, tessellating blocks and geometrical forms comprised of gradated and shifting colours, Scully also works in a variety of diverse media, including printmaking, sculpture, watercolour and pastel. Having developed a style over the past five decades that is uniquely his own, Scully has cemented his place in the history of painting. His work synthesises a thoroughly international collection of influences and personal perspectives – ranging from the legacy of American abstraction, with inspiration from the likes of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, and that of European tradition, with nods to Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian, as well as references to classical Greek architecture. While monumental in scale and gesture, Scully’s work retains an undeniable delicacy and sincerity of emotion.
Sean Scully was born in Dublin in 1945 and raised in South London. Wanting to be an artist from an early age, Scully attended evening classes at the Central School of Art in London from 1962 to 1965, and enrolled full time at Croydon College of Art, London from 1965 until 1968. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Newcastle University in 1972. He was awarded the Frank Knox Fellowship to Harvard University in 1972, where he visited the United States for the first time. In 1975, he moved to New York full-time. Today, he lives and works between New York and Bavaria. With a career that spans more than five decades, he has received numerous accolades and has been the subject of multiple touring exhibitions. In 2014, he became the first Western artist to have a career-length retrospective in China. Follow the Heart: The Art of Sean Scully 1964 – 2014 included over 100 paintings and travelled from Shanghai to Beijing. Scully was named a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2013 and has received honorary degrees from institutions such as the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston; the National University of Ireland, Dublin; Universitas Miguel Hernandez, Valencia; Burren College of Art, National University of Ireland; Newcastle University, UK, among others. A series of essays and conversations between Scully and the esteemed art critic Arthur Danto was published by Hatje Cantz in 2014, and a collection of Scully’s own writing, selected speeches and interviews, Inner, was released in 2016.
Significant solo exhibitions of his work were recently on view at Thorvaldens Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark (2 September - 5 March, 2023), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (11 April - 31 July, 2022), Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, (October 13 – January 15, 2021), Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal, Germany (June 11, 2020 - January 3, 2021), Albertina, Vienna, Austria (7 June – 8 September 2019); Instituto Cultural Cabañas, Guadalajara, Mexico (23 May – 29 September 2019); San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy (11 May – 13 October 2019); LWL-Museum for Art and Culture, Münster, Germany (5 May – 8 September 2019); Villa Panza, Fondo Ambiente Italiano, Varese, Italy (18 April 2019 – 6 January 2020); National Gallery of Art, London, UK (13 April – 11 August 2019); The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, USA (23 February – 19 May 2019) and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., USA (13 September 2018 – 3 February 2019); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK (29 September 2018 – 6 January 2019); De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands (21 April – 26 August 2018); Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany (24 March – 5 August 2018); Cuadra San Cristóal, Mexico City, Mexico (7 February – 24 March 2018); State Russian Museum – Marble Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia (3 March – 9 May 2018); Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Russia (3 November – 10 December 2017); Museum of the Nanjing University of the Arts, China (8 April – 8 May 2016); Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China (6 September – 9 October 2016); Hubei Art Museum, Wuhan, China (10 January – 12 March 2017); Shanghai Himalayas Art Museum, China (23 November 2014 – 25 January 2015); and Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA), Beijing, China (12 March – 23 April 2015). In 2015, Scully oversaw a complete renovation at the Romanesque chapel Santa Cecilia de Montserrat, near Barcelona, featuring his work in dialogue with the historic architecture and restoring the church to working condition.
Sean Scully’s work is in the permanent collections of numerous important institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Tate Modern, London; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Albertina, Vienna; and Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China, among many others.

Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

About Colm Toibin:
Colm Tóibín, born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.

His first novel, The South, was published in 1990. The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Master (a fictionalised version of the inner life of Henry James) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award, securing for Toíbín a bounty of thousands of euro as it is one of the richest literary awards in the world. Nora Webster won the Hawthornden Prize, whilst The Magician (a fictionalised version of the life of Thomas Mann) won the Folio Prize. His fellow artists elected him to Aosdána and he won the biennial "UK and Ireland Nobel" David Cohen Prize in 2021.

He succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He was appointed Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2017. He is now Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in Manhattan.

Provenance
Signed for the present owner at a special poetry reading in 2013 at the Drawing Center in NY, so provenance is direct (see attached documentation from the event)