Sean Scully Is an Art Star He ‘Won’t Bend the Knee for Anyone’

By Farah Nayeri

On a bright summer morning, the Irish-born artist Sean Scully interrupted a small watercolor for a conversation at his sunlit London atelier. The half-finished abstract rested on a trestle table among paint tubes and empty hummus tubs that they had been squeezed into.

Leaning against the walls were large new oils featuring colorful grids and stripes. Though abstract, they somehow evoked the rich scenery of North Africa; one was titled “Fez,” after Morocco’s second city.

Scully is showing several new paintings at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery in Seoul as part of “Soul,” an exhibition that is to open on Tuesday, just before Frieze Seoul kicks off [...]

Scully was born in Ireland in 1945 and moved to London when he was 4, settling with his family in a slum. “It was absolutely dire,” he recalled that morning, in an interview at his studio.