Sean Scully (born 1945) is one of the most significant abstract painters of our time. He has produced a wealth of variations on his core theme of lines and stripes during his decades-long career, creating works with a fascinating range of tone and expression, from the romantic to the melancholic. Early in his career Scully made figurative work to which he still feels indebted: "To this day my paintings retain a sense of the body, and the feeling of a physical relationship with the world." He considers German Expressionism an important source of inspiration and cites the influence of such artists as André Derain, Henri Matisse, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Presenting surprising new perspectives on the artist's work, this publication is the first to study the interplay between figuration and abstraction in Scully's oeuvre.