Sean Scully: Block

‘Scully’s walls or rather, his constructions – his assemblages of painted blocks, stacked and flanked one against another – do not follow any arithmetic or geometric rule. […] Every block and every unit he sets down is in itself absolutely unique and unrepeatable.’[1]

Joachim Pissarro, 2026

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, is pleased to present Block, an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Sean Scully. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

For Block, Scully presents a body of paintings spanning from 1974 to 2026, alongside a selection of sculptures from 2015 to 2025. The works, often vast in scale, engage in dialogue with one another. Echoes in palette, structure and form reverberate across their two- and three-dimensional surfaces. On this, the artist has stated: ‘My sculptures are my paintings 3D’.[2] Scully’s artworks are built layer by layer, block by block. Evoking architectural structures as much as forms in nature, they conjure horizon lines, meeting points between the earth and sky, rock formations, landscapes, and buildings. Comprised of coloured stacks, stripes or bands arranged on horizontal and vertical axes, these seemingly solid bricks of colour allow light to creep in through the cracks, grounding vast scale and gesture with a visual delicacy and vulnerability.

[1] J. Pissarro, ‘Sean Scully: Construere’, in Sean Scully: Tower, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2026, p. 102.

[2] S. Scully, in D. Carrier, ‘S. Scully’s Figurative Leap’, Hyperallergic, 19 March 2019.