Ellsworth KellyDartmouth2011
2011
About the Item
- Creator:Ellsworth Kelly (1923, American)
- Creation Year:2011
- Dimensions:Height: 14.02 in (35.6 cm)Width: 28.51 in (72.4 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU118524222951
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly was one of the key figures in postwar American art, exercising major influence on the fields of Pop art, minimalism, Color-Field and hard-edge painting. Widely known for his brightly colored geometric compositions, he was among the first artists, alongside his contemporary Frank Stella, to use irregularly shaped canvases. Although highly abstract, Kelly’s paintings and prints are precise expressions in color and form of his sensory experience of the world.
Kelly's works, both two- and three-dimensional, are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and displayed at such sites as the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
Kelly grew up in the town of Newburgh, New York, near the Oradell Reservoir. He was an avid birder as a child and loved the colorful illustrations of naturalist John James Audubon. Encouraged to study art by a high school teacher, he enrolled at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, remaining there until 1943, when he was inducted into the army. During World War II, he served along with scores of other artists, in a unit known as the Ghost Army, where he learned the elements of camouflage while creating ersatz trucks and tanks intended to mislead Axis forces.
When the war was over, Kelly took advantage of the G.I. Bill to study painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, drawing inspiration from the museum's collections, and, later, at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, in Paris. While in France, he immersed himself in the varied artistic movements and styles represented there and befriended Americans avant-gardists, such as composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, as well as the German-French Surrealist Jean Arp and Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși.
Upon his return to the United States, in 1954, he found himself at odds with the dominant style of the period, Abstract Expressionism, which favored a dynamic and energetic application of paint in a loose manner. Like Stella, Kelly was interested in formal precision and explorations of color. Following an exhibition of his work at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, Kelly’s work was included in the "Young America 1957” show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
During the 1960s, Kelly played with color and form to tease out and celebrate the tension between a painting’s subject and its background. In one of his most famous works, 1963's Red Blue Green, for example, two shapes, one red, one blue, both contrast and resonate with a green background that extends to the edge of the canvas on both sides, appearing at moments to be the work’s primary shape. To explore this relationship between form and ground further, Kelly began using nontraditional, shaped canvases, as in the monochromatic 1966 Yellow Piece, from, whose two curved corners draws the eye to the wall behind it, as though the gallery wall itself were part of the composition. A lithograph from the same period, Blue and Orange consists of two shapes in the title’s complementary colors facing off against one another with a tension that makes them appear almost animated.
Kelly made drawings and prints throughout his career, using plants and flowers as his primary source of inspiration. Like his paintings, his drawings tend to be relatively flat in perspective, but they are rarely abstract. A 1993 drawing of an oak leaf is clearly representational, but rendered with very minimal color and line. In the mid-1960s, he produced the series “Suite of Twenty-Seven Lithographs” with the Paris-based Maeght Éditeur.
Later, collaborating with Gemini G.E.L., he created very large-scale works, such as 1988’s Purple/Red/Gray/Orange, which is 18 feet long and might be one of the biggest lithographs ever made. Kelly produced 140 sculptures, including the aluminum White Curves, created for the Fondation Beyeler, in Riehen, Switzerland, in 2002. In his three-dimensional works, as in his paintings, Kelly used form, color and light to play with perceptions of surface and depth, inviting viewers to look closely and see the world in a new way.
Find original Ellsworth Kelly art on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: New York, NY
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 7 days of delivery.
- Blue / Black / Red / GreenBy Ellsworth KellyLocated in New York, NY4-color lithograph Sheet: 24 7/8 x 88 3/4 in. (63.2 x 225.4 cm) Edition of 45 Signed and numbered in pencil Published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles FramedCategory
Early 2000s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Untitled (Red State II)By Ellsworth KellyLocated in New York, NYLithograph in two tones of red, on Arches wove paper Sheet: 44 4/5 x 40 7/10 in. (113.7 x 103.5 cm) Frame: 47 3/4 x 43 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (121.3 x 111.1 x 3.8 cm) Edition of 13 Signed a...Category
1980s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- The WayBy Carmen HerreraLocated in New York, NY2018 Lithograph in colors, on Velin d' Arches 300gm paper Sheet: 39 2/5 x 21 1/10 in. (100.1 x 53.6 cm) Edition of 20 Signed and numbered in pencil Unframed, excellent conditionCategory
2010s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsPaper, Lithograph
- Color Squares 3By Ellsworth KellyLocated in New York, NY2011 5-color lithograph Sheet: 5 1/4 x 13 1/4 in. (13.3 x 33.7 cm) Edition of 60 Signed and numbered in pencilCategory
2010s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Color PanelsBy Ellsworth KellyLocated in New York, NY2011 5-color lithograph Sheet: 14 x 33 in. (35.6 x 83.8 cm) Edition of 45 Signed and numbered in pencilCategory
2010s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Line MusesBy Brice MardenLocated in New York, NY1999-2001 Etching and lithograph in colors, on Somerset Satin paper Sheet: 22 x 30 in. Edition of 45 Signed, dated and numbered in pencil, lower marginCategory
1990s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsEtching, Lithograph
- Poster of Brice Marden's studio (hand signed by Brice Marden) Nan Goldin photoBy Brice MardenLocated in New York, NYBrice Marden's Studio Offset lithograph poster (hand signed by Brice Marden in 2015) This print was published on the occasion of Brice Marden's 1996 exhibition at the Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea, New York City. The image is based on Nan Goldin's 1995 photograph of Marden working in his studio. The print was signed by Brice Marden for the present owner. A collectors item when hand signed! About Brice Marden: Ultimately I’m using the painting as a sounding board for the spirit. . . . You can be painting and go into a place where thought stops—where you can just be and it just comes out. . . . I present it as an open situation rather than a closed situation. —Brice Marden Brice Marden (1938–2023) continuously refined and extended the traditions of lyrical abstraction. Experimenting with self-imposed rules, limits, and processes, and drawing inspiration from his extensive travels, Marden brought together the diagrammatic formulations of Minimalism, the immediacy of Abstract Expressionism, and the intuitive gesture of calligraphy in his exploration of gesture, line, and color. Born in Bronxville, New York, Marden received an MFA from Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture, where his teachers included the painters Alex Katz and Jon Schueler. After graduation he worked as a guard at the Jewish Museum in New York. There, during a 1964 Jasper Johns retrospective, Marden studied Johns’s early works extensively and considered them in relation to the Baroque masters he has long admired, such as Francisco de Zurbarán, Francisco Goya, and Diego Velázquez. Marden’s paintings from the 1960s include subtle, shimmering monochromes in gray tones, sometimes assembled into multipanel works, in a manner similar to the black paintings and White Paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, who hired Marden as a studio assistant in 1966. A trip to Greece in the early 1970s led Marden to create the Hydra paintings (1972), which capture the turquoise hues of the Mediterranean, and Thira (1979–80), a painting composed of eighteen interconnected panels inspired by the shadows and geometry of ancient temples. To heighten the effect of each color, plane, and brushstroke, Marden developed the unique process of adding beeswax and turpentine to oil paint and applying the mixture in many thin layers. Marden employed this technique for the Grove Group paintings (1972–76)—exhibited at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue gallery in New York in 1991, along with related works—and the Red Yellow Blue paintings...Category
2010s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsPencil, Lithograph, Offset
- Sit on Steel, European Minimalist poster, Hand Signed & Inscribed to NadineBy Bernar VenetLocated in New York, NYBernar Venet Sit on Steel (Hand Signed & Inscribed), 1991 Offset lithograph poster. hand signed. dated. dedicated. Boldly signed, dated and inscribed in silver sharpie on the front 26 3/4 × 18 1/4 inches Unframed Rare vintage poster, hand signed and dedicated by Bernar Venet to the legendary sculptor Isaac Witkin...Category
1990s Minimalist Landscape Prints
MaterialsLithograph, Offset, Permanent Marker
- Blue and Green over OrangeBy Ellsworth KellyLocated in New York, NYPrinter: Imprimerie Arte, Paris Publisher: Maeght Editeur, Paris Edition size: 75, plus proofs Catalogue raisonné: Axsom 29 Signed and numbered in pencil, lower marginCategory
1960s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Three Sheets Framed Lithograph by Lennart NystromBy Lennart NyströmLocated in Long Island City, NYArtist: Lennart Nyström, Swedish (1944 - ) Three Sheets Date: circa 1970 Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 131/140 Size: 25 x 19 in. (63...Category
1970s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Composition, Minimalist Lithograph by Lennart NystromBy Lennart NyströmLocated in Long Island City, NYArtist: Lennart Nyström, Swedish (1944 - ) Tan and Brown Composition circa 1980 Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 13/150 Size: 25.5 ...Category
1970s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph
- Galerie Maeght /// Abstract Geometric Minimalist Ellsworth Kelly Colorfield ArtBy Ellsworth KellyLocated in Saint Augustine, FLArtist: Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923-2015) Title: "Galerie Maeght" Year: 1964 Medium: Original Lithograph, Exhibition Poster on light wove paper Limited edition: Unknown Printer...Category
1960s Minimalist Abstract Prints
MaterialsLithograph