The work of American Abstract Expressionist Jon Schueler (1916-1992) will be celebrated in a display opening at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art on 4 June 2005. Jon Schueler: The Sound of Sleat comprises seven works made in France, the U.S. and Scotland. It includes recent acquisition A Yellow Sun and works on loan from the Jon Schueler Estate, courtesy of the Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh.

Born in Milwaukee, Schueler studied Economics and English Literature at the University of Wisconsin. He moved to Los Angeles after World War Two, having served in the US Army Air Force. In 1945 he joined a portrait painting class taught by David Lax. He moved to San Francisco two years later and attended the California School of Fine Arts from 1949 until 1951. His teachers included Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn, but Clyfford Still was to have the greatest influence on his work and became his mentor.

On Still's recommendation Schueler moved to New York in 1951 and quickly became immersed in the art scene there, meeting artists including Franz Kline and Barnett Newman.

Schueler first came to Scotland in 1957 when he set up a studio near Mallaig on the Sound of Sleat in the north-west Highlands. The landscape around the remote fishing village, in particular the drama and flux of its skies, influenced his work for the rest of his life.

Schueler returned to Scotland in 1967, spending the summer working on the Isle of Skye. Between 1970 and 1975 he lived in Mallaig and spent three months each year in his studio there until his death in New York on 5 August 1992.

Magda Salvesen, the artist's widow, said:"The colour in the greys of the West Highland skies, the pulses of light over the Sound of Sleat, and the implicit presence of the islands - seen and felt through the changing weather - brought Jon Schueler back to Scotland year after year.

"The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art acquired a Schueler from the first exhibition that Jon had in Edinburgh, in 1971. The response from the Scots over the years was most gratifying to Jon who felt that they identified with the imagery in his paintings in a deeply personal and often mystical way. With their acquisition of A Yellow Sun, the Gallery has chosen a striking and important painting of Jon's - one filled with the remembered and imagined force of the sun seen suddenly and briefly through veils of colour over the sea."

Jon Schueler: The Sound of Sleat
4 June 2005 - 5 March 2006
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission free
www.nationalgalleries.org