"I do believe abstraction is and was meant to embody deep emotion. I believe that’s its job, in the history of art." - Sean Scully

Sean Scully preparing for the MKM Museum Küppersmühle exhibition.

After a three-year redevelopment project costing some seventeen million pounds, the Ulster Museum reopened in October to record crowds. Some one hundred thousand people visited the institution in its first four weeks and the crowds keep coming. One reason is the landmark exhibition of Ireland's most internationally celebrated artist, Sean Scully, which continues till 14th February.

Constantinople or the Sensual Concealed: The Imagery of Sean Scully is a major retrospective of Scully’s work.

It charts his career from his early grid paintings of the 1970s to variations on the expansive and sensuously painted Wall of Light series acclaimed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2006, to recent new work.

Born in Dublin in 1945, Scully has become the most respected and widely exhibited abstract painter of his generation.

This exhibition, which began with the museum's reopening, brings together over sixty paintings and additional works on paper in a celebration of Scully’s career.

THE ONLY BRITISH AND IRISH VENUE FOR THIS RETROSPECTIVE.

The Ulster Museum is the only British and Irish venue for this important exhibition. Easily accessible, the museum is situated in Belfast’s Botanic Gardens, right in the heart of the University Area of South Belfast.

Sean Scully has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States and his work is represented in the collections of major international museums and galleries. Since settling in New York in 1975, Scully now moves between his studios in Barcelona, Munich and New York.

This exhibition was organised in conjunction with MKM Museum Küppersmühle für Moderne Kunst, Duisburg, Germany.

Pictured above: Sean Scully Beckett, 2006. Private Collection