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Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. [78], In Nov 2019, Christie's set an auction record for the artist with the work Red Curve VII, sold for a $9.8million. [64], Kelly was commissioned to create a large outdoor sculpture in 1968 for the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY. Black over Blue, first exhibited in the Betty Parsons Gallery, reflects his recurring interest in both layered works and non-traditionally shaped canvases. In Black over Blue, the curved, black panel extends beyond the confines of the rectangular blue canvas, making the surrounding wall an essential part of the composition. Playing with the paper top from a take-out coffee cup, Kelly cut and folded a section of the round object, which he then put on the table and rocked back and forth. Ellsworth Kelly: Artworks, Biography, Exhibitions & Exclusive [20] As a painter he worked from then on in an exclusively abstract mode. ", "When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. Ellsworth Kelly - Interesting stories about famous people, biographies He used that method for inspiration when creating early abstract works such as Colors for a Large Wall and the series titled Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance (both 1951), checkerboards of colour, black, and white squares assembled in a random order. He was also associated with hard-edge painting and Color Field painting. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation The Ellsworth Kelly Foundation upholds the philanthropic legacy of one of America's preeminent artists through its ongoing support of causes Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) cared about deeply and supported generously during his lifetime: the arts, historic preservation, environmental conservation, and education. Kelly has since executed many public commissions, including Wright Curve (1966), a steel sculpture designed for permanent installation in the Guggenheim's Peter B. Lewis Theater;[56] a mural for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 1969; Curve XXII (I Will) at Lincoln Park in Chicago in 1981; a 1985 commission by I. M. Pei for the Raffles City building in Singapore; the Houston Triptych, vertical bronze planes mounted on a tall concrete at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1986; Totem (1987), a sculpture for the Parc de la Creueta del Coll, Barcelona; the Dallas Panels (Blue Green Black Red) (1989) for the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas;[57] a 1989 sculpture for the headquarters of Nestl in Vevey, Switzerland;[33] Gaul (1993), a monumental sculpture commissioned by the Institute d'Art Contemporain, Nmes, France; a two-part memorial for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., in 1993; and large-scale Berlin panels for the Deutscher Bundestag, Berlin, in 1998. Kelly intends for viewers to experience his artwork with instinctive, physical responses to the work's structure, color, and surrounding space rather than with contextual or interpretive analysis. The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation [17], Kelly died in Spencertown, New York on December 27, 2015, aged 92. More recently, Donald Sultan's schematic, abstract still lifes of fruit, flowers, and other everyday subjects clearly owe a debt to Kelly's example, as does the work of many graphic designers of the postwar period. In 1943, Kelly enlisted in the army and joined the camouflage unit called "the Ghost Army," which had among its members many artists and designers. Encouraged by his teachers, Kelly started experimenting with painting and sculpture in elementary school. Soon after, he constructed his first sculpture-in-the-round, Pony. [53] Haus der Kunst exhibited the first comprehensive retrospective of Kelly's black and white works in 2012. Born in Newburgh, New York, Kelly served in the military during World War II, allowing him to study art in Boston and Paris on the GI Bill through the mid-to-late 1940s. Jack Shear/Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Three of his pieces: Atlantic, Bar, and Painting in Three Panels, were selected for and shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art's exhibit, "Young America 1957". In 1999, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced that it had bought 22 works, paintings, wall reliefs and sculptures, by Ellsworth Kelly. "Biography of Ellsworth Kelly, Minimalist Artist." "[27], Kelly tendered drawings of plants and flowers from the late 1940s on. [76] From 1964 he produced prints and editioned sculptures at Gemini G.E.L. After his army discharge in 1945, Kelly studied at the Boston Museum of the Fine Arts School for two years, where his work was largely figurative and classical. Ellsworth Kelly was born on May 31st, in 1923. Holland Cotter, A Giant of the New Surveys His Rich Past, The New York Times, October 13, 1996: H43. [6], In 2014 Kelly organized a show of Matisse drawings at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in South Hadley, Massachusetts. When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. Ellsworth Kelly American Painter and Sculptor Born: May 31, 1923 - Newburgh, New York Died: December 27, 2015 - Spencertown, New York Movements and Styles: Minimalism , Hard-edge Painting , Post-Painterly Abstraction Ellsworth Kelly Summary Accomplishments Important Art Biography Influences and Connections Useful Resources Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor and printmaker whose work embodies the avant-garde of post-war abstraction. Instead, he was interested in what happened in the act of viewing. Shear became director of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-ellsworth-kelly-minimalist-artist-4177863 (accessed July 30, 2023). His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, color and form, similar to the work of John McLaughlin and Kenneth Noland. 1996-1998. painted aluminum. Curves on White (Four Panels) 2011. oil on canvas, four panels. The New York City art world in 1954 was dominated by Abstract Expressionism. "[27], Kelly commented "I realized I didn't want to compose pictures I wanted to find them. 54 Famous Paintings Made by Famous Artists, Victor Vasarely, Leader of the Op Art Movement, George Catlin, Painter of American Indians, A Chronological Timeline of Artist Paul Gauguin's Life, Biography of L. S. Lowry, English Painter, Diego Rivera: Renowned Artist Who Courted Controversy, M.L.S, Library Science, Indiana University, "Curve XXII (I Will)" (1981), Lincoln Park in Chicago, "Blue Black" (2001), Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, "White Curve" (2009), Art Institute of Chicago. [23], After leaving New York City for Spencertown in 1970, he rented a former theater in the nearby town of Chatham, allowing to work in a studio more spacious than any he had previously occupied. His initial series of 28 transfer lithographs, entitled Suite of Plant Lithographs, marked the beginning of a corpus that would grow to 72 prints and countless drawings of foliage. In 1958, Kelly conceived one of his first wood sculptures, Concorde Relief I (1958), a modestly scaled wall relief in elm, which explores the visual play and balance between two rectangular forms layered on top of each other, the uppermost with its top-right and lower-left corners removed. [33] His Purple/Red/Gray/Orange (1988), at eighteen feet in length, may be the largest single-sheet lithograph ever made. ", "I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract. His work was later included in the documenta in 1964, 1968, 1977, 1992. Biography Ellsworth Kelly (May 31, 1923 - December 27, 2015) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. He created White Curve, the largest wall sculpture he has ever made, which is on display since 2009. Works [72], The United States Postal Service announced in January, 2019, that a set of stamps honoring Kelly's artwork would be issued in 2019. [38] The Rocker series began in 1959 after Kelly's casual conversation with Agnes Martin, who lived below him on Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan. Ellsworth Kelly Biography. In 1970, Kelly moved to upstate New York. While in Boston, he exhibited in his first group show at the Boris Mirski Gallery and taught art classes at the Norfolk House Center in Roxbury. After that point, he has said, "Painting as I had known it was finished for me. Study for Window, Museum of Modern Art, Paris. Ellsworth Kelly - Artist Biography and Price History on 1stDibs Kellys freestanding sculptures, which he began creating in the late 1950s, are, like his paintings, geometric objects of bold solid colours and are made of industrial materials such as steel and aluminum (e.g., Gate [1959]). Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor and printmaker best known for his intensely hued geometric abstractionspaintings, often in monochrome, and sometimes on shaped canvases, based on his keen observations of everyday life. While absorbing the work of these many movements and artists, Kelly has said, "I was deciding what I didn't want in a painting, and just kept throwing things out - like marks, lines and the painted edge." Dree Hemingway in Ellsworth Kelly's dress, Calvin Klein Collection. [79], Ellsworth Kelly arrives at LACMA's gala opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum on February 9, 2008, in Los Angeles, William Rubin, "Ellsworth Kelly: The Big Form,", cole nationale suprieure des Beaux-Arts, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Chevalier de lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres, "FBI couldn't get a clear picture on abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly", "How the Ghost Army of WWII Used Art to Deceive the Nazis", Czanne and Beyond, February 26, 2009May 31, 2009, "Ellsworth Kelly: 'I want to live another 15 years', "Ellsworth Kelly, Artist Who Mixed European Abstraction Into Everyday Life, Dies at 92", "Sixty Years at Full Intensity Christoph Grunenberg interviews Ellsworth Kelly", Ellsworth Kelly: Relief Paintings, May 12June 29, 2001, Ellsworth Kelly: Singular Forms 19662009, April 18June 8, 2013, Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series, May 25September 8, 2013, Ellsworth Kelly: Gray 1975 77, May 12August 17, 2001, "A Giant of the New Surveys His Rich Past", Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings, October 14November 28, 1992, Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Lithographs from the Artist's Collection, December 5, 2008February 7, 2009, Ellsworth Kelly: Wood Sculpture, September 18, 2011March 4, 2012, When an Abstract Artist Falls in Love With Monet: Monet/Kelly at Clark Art Institute, Ellsworth Kelly Falls for Monet, "The hidden message in Robert Indiana's Love | Art | Agenda", "With a new show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 89-year-old artist Ellsworth Kelly shows no signs of slowing down. As did the early-20, The subtle fluctuation between the meditative, decorative and industrial in much of Kelly's work can be traced in part to this design training in art school. Information from Wikipedia, made available under the. Painted aluminum. In 1951, the 28-year-old artist Ellsworth Kelly submitted a grant to the Guggenheim Foundation, proposing an alphabet of plastic pictorial elements, aiming to establish a new scale of painting, a closer contact between the artist and the wall, providing a way for painting to accompany modern architecture. Though the application was rejected, the project came to fruition in the series of drawings known as Line Form Color. in Los Angeles and Tyler Graphics Ltd near New York City. I am less interested in marks on the panels than the "presence" of the panels themselves. He built a 20,000 square foot compound three hours north in Spencertown, New York. Ellsworth Kelly's final art project was a 2,700-square-foot building influenced by Romanesque churches that he never saw in its completed form. The Boston Panels, The John J. Moakley Federal Courthouse, Boston. His mother was a former schoolteacher of Welsh and Pennsylvania German stock. Who Is Ellsworth Kelly? 10 Things to Know - National Gallery of Art (2020, August 28). He also associated with French Surrealist artist Jean Arp and Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. 132 x 88 x 2 1 2 inches. In 2014 Kelly's painting Red Curve (1982) sold at auction for $4.5 million at Christie's New York. He returned to the United States in 1954 and lived among other artists, including Agnes Martin, Jack Youngerman, Robert Indiana, Lenore Tawney, and James Rosenquist. Visit the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum in NYC, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Dimensions: 83 5/8 x 135 7/8 inches. He lived and worked in Spencertown, New York. He created it by using numbered slips of paper; each referred to a colour, one of eighteen different hues to be placed on a grid 40 inches by 40 inches. In New York City, while creating canvases with precise blocks of solid color, he lived in a community with such artists as James Rosenquist, Jack Youngerman, and Agnes Martin. It was made to exist forever in the present; it is an idea and can be repeated anytime in the future. 1951: Kelly peintures et reliefs 1955: 1969: New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 1973: 1990: Yellow Curve-Portikus 1992: Red Floor Panel 1994: 2011: 1 / 8 1951: Kelly poses with recent. The sculptures are designed to be seen quickly, sometimes in a single glance. Photo by Jerry L. Thompson, courtesy of the artist. Oil on canvas. He diverged from that movement, however, in his rejection of painterliness, or showing any sign of the painters hand in his paintings. Kelly's two-paneled Blue Black (2001), 28 feet tall and made of painted honeycomb aluminum, was commissioned for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis,[59] and the large-scale bronze Untitled (2005) was commissioned specifically for the courtyard of the Phillips Collection. Ellsworth Kelly | Artist Bio - Nasher Sculpture Center His introduction to Surrealism and Neo-Plasticism influenced his work and caused him to test the abstraction of geometric forms. Exposure to camouflage in the war influenced Kelly's developing aesthetic. This database holds biographical information on Air Force leaders, active duty, Reserve and retired general officers; current senior executives; secretaries of the Air Force; and chief master sergeants of the Air Force. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [emailprotected]. In 1970, Ellsworth Kelly moved out of Manhattan. Ellsworth Kelly is an American artist who expresses his vision through the mediums of painting, sculpture and printmaking. His place of birth was in Newburg, New York. He studied there until his induction into the U.S. Army on January 1, 1943. Painting in Three Panels, for example, was particularly noted; at the time critics questioned his creating a work from three canvases. When he moved to upstate New York in 1970, Kelly began creating large-scale outdoor sculptures and public art works that appear in museum collections around the world and in public spaces in cities such as Chicago (Curve XXII, also called I Will [1981]) and Berlin (Berlin Totem [2008]). Luther College Fine Arts Collection : People : Ellsworth Kelly Weathering steel. [51] Kelly was invited to show at the So Paulo Biennial in 1961. [30] The plant studies are, for the most part, contour drawings of leaves, stems and flowers done in clean strokes of pencil or pen and centered on the page. In 1990 Kelly curated the exhibition, "Artist's Choice: Ellsworth Kelly Fragmentation and the Single Form," at the Museum of Modern Art. [1] Although his parents were reluctant to support Kelly's art training, his school teacher, Dorothy Lange Opsut, encouraged him to go further. Ellsworth Kelly Biography Bibliography. In the 1960s Kelly also began applying his approach to colour, form, and line to printmaking. Towards the end of the artists life he was in ill health, hampered by an oxygen tank, the need for which he is quoted as saying was because of "the turpentine," which prevented him from working on his "big paintings." Directly inspired by this observation, he created his own version of these windows. Though often associated with Minimalism, Kelly preceded the movement by a decade. We use our own and third-party cookies to personalize your experience and the promotions you see. Dimensions: 94 1/2 x 94 1/2 inches. Listen. Yellow Blue was his first steel sculpture and remains the only one to date in painted steel. Paint changes color. His first series of paintings executed in upstate New York was the Chatham Seriesnamed for the nearby town in which he made them in a spacious former-theater-turned-studio. John James Audubon had a particularly strong influence on Kelly's work throughout his career. His work of this period also provided a useful bridge from the vanguard American geometric abstraction of the 1930s and early 1940s to the minimalism and reductive art of the mid-1960s and 1970s. The facade of Marks's Los Angeles gallery was inspired by Study for Black and White Panels, a collage he made while living in Paris in 1954, and a painting, Black Over White. Ellsworth Kelly attended public schools, where he excelled in his art classes. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. He had a slight stutter that persisted into his teenage years. In the 1990s, Kelly further developed the possibilities of the relief and continues expanding on this motif today. Throughout his career, frequent subjects for his lithographs and drawings have been simple, lined renditions of plants, leaves and flowers. Biography - Ellsworth Kelly His pieces were considered radically different from the other twenty-nine artists works. [citation needed], Kelly's background in the military has been suggested as a source of the seriousness of his works. Omissions? [1] His father was an insurance company executive of Scots-Irish and German descent. Biography Minimalist painter and sculptor, Ellsworth Kelly explains, "By removing the content from my work I shifted the visual reality of painting to include the space around it." Kelly was born May 31, 1923 in Newburgh, New York. He showed again at her gallery in the fall of 1957. He earned his fame for being a talented sculptor, painter, and a printmaker. The Ellsworth Kelly Foundation is celebrating the centennial of the artist's birth by donating $2.75 million in grants and $16 million worth of Kelly's work to 50 U.S. museums. [68] Notable private collectors include, among others, Eli Broad and Gwyneth Paltrow. Kelly's first retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1973. His paintings are often hung away from the wall, giving them a three-dimensional, sculptural quality. [35] In 1975, Kelly was the first artist to exhibit for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art's MATRIX series. Romanesque and Byzantine art appealed to him, as did the Surrealist method of automatic drawing and the concept of art dictated by chance. He was curious about the space between the painting and the person looking at it. Like many of Kelly's sculptures, this one and a half inch-thick piece painted matte-black is very flat and has a two-dimensional quality. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything. Ellsworth Kelly [61] Kelly installed Berlin Totem, a 40 feet stainless-steel sculpture, in the courtyard of the Embassy of the United States, Berlin, in 2008. Facades of the building include blown-glass windows in simple colors that reflect Kelly's life work. 70 x 328 x 2 5/8 inches. 2021. [41], Kelly's admiration for Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso are apparent in his work. In 1959, the Museum of Modern Art included Kelly in their landmark exhibition 16 Americans alongside Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenberg among others. He was the second born . He is known for Extreme Homes (2012), Prince Charming Polska (2021) and American Art in the 1960s (1972). [1] During his last year in Paris, Kelly was ill and also suffered depression; Sims thought that influenced his predominant use of black and white during that period. His personal discovery of Claude Monet's brightly-colored late-career works in 1952 inspired Kelly to explore even more freedom in his own painting. According to Kelly, the French told him he was too American, and the Americans said he was too French. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [emailprotected]. Described as a secular chapel by Kellys partner of 30 years, Jack Shear, the building is the only work of its kind by Kelly. However, Kelly continued to paint and innovate until his death. Their pieces are also focused on the experience of viewing art instead of trying to convey a specific concept. Kelly created his pieces using a succession of ideas on various forms. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. His sculptural pieces are as minimal as his paintings. Kelly called them shaped canvases. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ellsworth-Kelly, Guggenheim - Biography of Ellsworth Kelly, Ellsworth Kelly - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. While not adhering to any one artistic movement, Kelly vitally influenced the development of Minimalism, Hard-edge painting, Color Field, and Pop art. Matthew Marks Gallery Real-life observations are the backbone of Kelly's abstraction works, which are replications of the shapes, shadows, and other visual sensations he experiences in the world around him. And in an installation like the 65-foot, painted aluminum Sculpture for a Large Wall, commissioned for the lobby of Philadelphias Transportation Center, he was able to work in a truly architectural mode, scaling the work to its site. Gift of the artist and The Riklis Collection of McCrory Corporation (both by exchange) During the 1970s and 1980s, inspired by his move to the pastoral upstate New York, Kelly began expanding his use of the curve and making large, totem-like sculptures - many designed to be displayed outdoors. "[1] Although Kelly is now considered an essential innovator and contributor to the American art movement, it was hard for many to find the connection between Kelly's art and the dominant stylistic trends. He wanted to escape a busy social life that was eating into his time producing art. Samantha Friedman, Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, 2021. While in the army, Kelly served in France, England and Germany, including a brief stay in Paris. In addition to creating totemic sculptures, Kelly began making publicly commissioned artwork, including a sculpture for the city of Barcelona in 1978 and an installation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. in 1993. For the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse (designed by Henry N. Cobb) in Boston he designed The Boston Panels, 21 brilliantly colored aluminum panels installed in the central rotunda as a single work throughout the building.[58]. Named "Austin," it stands in Austin, Texas as part of the Blanton Museum's permanent collection and opened to the public in February 2018. New York: DelMonico Books and D.A.P. In Paris, he absorbed the lessons of Byzantine icons and Romanesque frescoes, Jean Arps experiments with chance and Henri Matisses economical line, all of which helped him develop his own artistic language. With its curved corners and single, all-encompassing color, the canvas itself becomes the composition, transforming the wall behind it into the picture's ground. "[42] Many of his paintings consist of a single (usually bright) color, with some canvases being of irregular shape, sometimes called "shaped canvases." In Paris, artists such as John Cage and Hans Arp encouraged Kelly to experiment with the idea of chance in his artwork. The Ghost soldiers used inflatable tanks, trucks, and other elements of subterfuge to mislead the Axis forces about the direction and disposition of Allied forces. When Kelly returned to the United States from Paris in 1954, he joined a new wave of American painters coming of age in the wake of Abstract Expressionism, many wishing to turn away from the New York School's preoccupation with inner, ego-based psychological expression toward a new mode of working with broad fields of color, the empirical observation of nature, and the referencing of everyday life. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ellsworth Kelly showed no interest in expressing emotion, creating concepts, or telling a story with his art. Mini Bio (1) Ellsworth Kelly was born on May 31, 1923 in Newburgh, New York, USA. I feel that the freedom of colors in space is very much what Ive always been involved in.. [4] His exposure to military camouflage during the time he served became part of his basic art training. I didn't want my personality in it. In Red Blue Green, part of his crucial series exploring this motif, Kelly's sharply delineated, bold red and blue shapes both contrast and resonate with the solid green background, taking natural forms as inspiration. He died on December 27, 2015 in Spencertown, New York. Much like Frank Stella . Ellsworth Kelly; Sketchbook #34, New York City, 1957 Ellsworth Kelly; Sketchbook #32, New York City, 1956-57 Ellsworth Kelly; Study for Antibes, 1949 Ellsworth Kelly; Study for Wood Cutout with String II, 1949 Ellsworth Kelly; Mended Skylight IV, 1949 Ellsworth Kelly; Lily, 1961 Ellsworth Kelly;