Obituary: Larry Scully
by Sue Williamson
Less than two weeks after the opening of a major retrospective of his work at Stellenbosch's Sasol Art Museum, Professor Larry Scully (80) died of head injuries sustained in a Christmas Day car accident near Strand, in the Cape. Scully, who prior to his retirement had been head of the Department of Fine Arts in Stellenbosch, was one of South Africa's best-known artists.
Born in 1922 in Gibraltar to a British army father, his early childhood years were spent in England. His mother was a South African, and the family was to immigrate to this country in 1938. In 1947, he enrolled in fine arts at the University of Witwatersrand, where his fellow students included several influential figures in the making - Cecil Skotnes, Anna Vorster, and Christo Coetzee, to name a few.
For most of his life, Scully worked as an art educator while pursuing a career as a painter, experimenting with allegorical tribal themes, bleeding paint abstractions and photographs into which the artist worked with pen and ink. One of his best-known works was his Madonna and Child of Soweto, which was commissioned by The Star newspaper in 1973, and installed in Soweto's famous Regina Mundi church. In the l960s he represented South Africa at the Venice and Sao Paulo Biennales.
Capetonians might remember his multi media slide shows staged at the Baxter Theatre, when Scully would combine up to a thousand slides with music to produce a unique event inevitably dazzling the entire audience.
It is indeed sad that at a time when his work is once more being foregrounded and considered, Scully should lose his life in this untimely way.
'Larry Scully at 80' will remain on view at the Museum until February 3.
Sasol Art Museum, 52 Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch
Tel: (021) 808 3524
Fax: (021) 808 3669
Email: usmuseum@sun.ac.za
Hours: Tues - Fri, 9am - 4.30pm, Wed 9am - 8pm, Sat 9am - 5pm, Sun 2pm - 17pm
