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= Test: Larry Scully = 12 December 1922 - 2002

Laurence Vincent Scully (known as Larry Scully) was a South African painter and visual artist, and a major figure in post-war South African art. He is best known for the large, iconic painting ‘Madonna and Child of Soweto’ (1973), which depicts a black Mary and baby Jesus touching the hand of God above Soweto. It still hangs in the Regina Mundi Church in Soweto, a site of great historical and social importance in South Africa.

His other paintings were mainly in the abstract impressionist style. Urban landscapes of the Johannesburg skyline dominated his early work in the 1960s and 1970s, and sea and landscapes his later work after he and his family moved to the Cape in 1976 when he took up the position of Professor of Creative Arts, Stellenbosch University.

He was also a renowned multimedia performance artist, combining music and thousands of his slides in huge ‘happenings’ on several large screens at once, with the images visually ‘hyperlinked’ through visual connections, decades before the advent of the internet. These were joyful celebrations of music (from the Jacksons to Elgar), art, and people across the world. He later branched into ‘photodrawings’ where he drew on his original photographic prints with felt tip pens, creating new artworks.

Scully’s focus on creativity and the unity of the human spirit, led him to various social justice actions in apartheid South Africa. These included being a founding member of the Polly Street Art Centre along with Cecil Skotnes, his painting ‘Madonna and Child of Soweto’ (1973), his later follow up collage and painting ‘Madonna and Child of Soweto’ (1976) as a response to State violence, his 1976 Stellenbosch exhibition of photographs of the destruction of the mixed-race area District Six and the forced removals— a brave intervention at the heart of Afrikanerdom at this time, and his post-apartheid 1997 work ‘Nkosi Sikele iAfrika (God Bless Africa)’ celebrating the promise and hope of the Nelson Mandela years.

Early Life
Scully was born in Gibraltar on 12 December 1922. His father was Irish and his mother was South African.

His most famous painting is the Madonna and Child of Soweto, painted in 1973, which still hangs in the Regina Mundi Church in Soweto and which is visited by people from all over the world.