Sean Scully fills a Spanish monastery with bursts of color

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Rob Sharp

Mr. Scully's abstract works include “The Gatherer” (2014). Credit Claudio Abate

SPAIN---On a hot day in June, the craggy slopes of Montserrat towering above him, the Irish-American painter Sean Scully walked toward the entrance of a small monastery about an hour’s drive from Barcelona. Inside, 22 of his artworks, including six abstract canvases with his signature bands and blocks of color, energize a space that is more than 1,000 years old. Does he consider himself a religious man? “I am a very spiritual person,” he said. “I could say a Catholic with a strong underpinning of Zen.” [link]

At one end of the monastery, the space is dominated by Mr. Scully’s roughly 20-foot-long work “Holly-Stationes,” from 2013, which consists of 14 small abstract paintings embedded into a reddish Cor-Ten steel frame — a personal interpretation, he has said, of the 14 Stations of the Cross.