THE acclaimed artist Sean Scully is returning to his Newcastle roots for a major retrospective exhibition.

Hailed as a master of post-minimalist abstraction, he will exhibit his works at the city’s Laing Art Gallery and Newcastle University’s Hatton Gallery, from Saturday to May 28.

Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1945, Scully moved to Newcastle in 1968 to study Fine Art at Newcastle University.

During this time, he began to develop his iconic style of technically flawless paintings, consisting of a complicated grid system of intersecting bands and lines.

Following his studies in Newcastle, Scully was awarded the runner-up prize in the John Moore’s Painting Prize in Liverpool in 1972 and 1974.

Sean Scully: 1970 will, for the first time, present a major exhibition of his early works. Collectively, they demonstrate remarkable confidence at this earliest stage of his career and reveal the genesis of his continued fascination with stripes and the spaces in between.

In addition to his paintings, the exhibition will present a large selection of Scully’s sketches from 1967-1969, which still provide the artist with inspiration to this day.

Scully lives and works in New York, USA, and Germany

He said : “Newcastle is a wonderful town with a great history. Half my family lived in Durham, as they were coal miners.

“So while I was at Newcastle University, I was emotionally connected.

“And the Fine Art Department is maybe the best in England. So in a way, I’m bringing everything back home. Closing a perfect circle, and showing my thanks and appreciation, for what I was given.”

Julie Milne, Chief Curator of Galleries at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, said:

“We are delighted to host an exhibition of works by Sean Scully, one of the most significant and prolific artists working today.

“Scully has a strong connection with the city having studied at Newcastle University in the seventies and this exhibition provides an opportunity for visitors to see how Scully was influenced by Newcastle’s architectural landscape.

“Simultaneously on display at the Laing and Hatton Gallery, this is a welcome return of Scully’s vibrant and compelling paintings to the North-East.”