Ellsworth Kelly

Prolific American painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly (born 1923), a leader of the hard-edge school, is best known for his huge canvases of geometric forms in bright colors.

Ellsworth Kelly was born on May 31, 1923, in Newburgh, New York. He went to elementary and high schools in New Jersey, attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and served in the U.S. Army Engineer Corps during World War II (1943-1945). Ironically, in terms of his later use of color, he served in the camouflage unit in France.

Art Training and Early Work

Kelly got his initial training at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1946-1948), then went on to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He had his first one-man show in Paris in 1951 and continued to live there until 1954, when he returned to New York City.

In New York, Kelly exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, 1957, and 1959. By this time his work had begun to attract wider attention, and he was asked to participate in various group shows, the most important at the Brussels World's Fair (1958) and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1959). After 1960 Kelly gained increasing national and international recognition. He was invited to show at the São Paulo Biennial in 1961 and at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962.

Kelly's work can be seen in numerous museums. In addition, he executed several public commissions, the most notable being a painted metal relief for the Transportation Building in Philadelphia (1957), a plastic mosaic mural for the Eastman House in New York, and a mural for the New York State Pavilion at the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965. His awards include the Carnegie International of 1962 and 1964 and a fine-arts citation from Brandeis University in 1962.

Style

From his earliest work Kelly's style was consistently cool and hard-edged in orientation. Living in Paris, he was influenced by the geometric abstraction of such European artists as Piet Mondrian. This is especially apparent in his paintings of the early 1950s, many of which are based on strict geometric modules. Unlike Mondrian, however, Kelly frequently composed his paintings in separate panels that could be joined to form a large, single image. Many of these works are as much murals as easel paintings, and they demonstrate how Kelly's art is amply suited to the demands of architectural settings.

Some of Kelly's finest individual paintings were executed during the 1960s. Blue-White (1962) consists of two large blue masses that barely converge within a white field; the clean simplicity of Kelly's drawing allows these forms to expand enormously, resulting in a work of truly monumental scale.

The Modern Era

Well into the 1990s, Kelly continued to gain in popularity and recognition. A quiet man who was seldom seen at functions of the art world, he once said, "I'm not interested in edges. I'm interested in mass and color."

In the 1980s, Kelly's works were exhibited at the Los Angeles City Museum of Art, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Dallas Museum in Texas, and the Whitney Museum in New York City. In 1989, his works were part of an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, entitled Geometric Abstraction and Minimalization in America.

In 1991, Kelly was again part of an exhibition at the Whitney, and the following year he was shown again at the Guggenheim as part of the Art of This Century exhibit. In the fall of 1996, Kelly's works were presented in a major retrospective at the Guggenheim.

Further Reading

For more information see Edward Lucie-Smith, Late Modern (1969); Who's Who in American Art; L.A. Times, Feb. 21, 1997. □

Ellsworth Kelly 1923–, American painter, b. Newburgh, N.Y. He moved to New York City in 1941, studying at Pratt Institute, and later attended the Boston Museum Arts School. In Paris during the late 1940s, he studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts and met many giants of modern art. He began to create relief sculptures and multipanel paintings, formats that remained features of his work. Returning (1954) to the United States, he became known in the 1950s and 60s for his hard-edge paintings, formal, impersonal compositions painted in flat areas of color, usually with sharp contours and geometric shapes. Increasingly large, some were conventional rectangular canvases, some made up of several single-color panels joined to make triangles, trapezoids, and other shape; Atlantic (1956) and Green Blue Red (1964) are in the Whitney Museum, New York City, and Blue Red Green (1962) in the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Kelly has also made large geometric sheet-metal sculptures, e.g., the work (1957) commissioned for Philadelphia's Transportation Building (now Penn Center), and is a collagist and printmaker.

Bibliography: See studies and catalogs by J. Coplans (1972), E. C. Goossen (1973), R. H. Axsom and P. Floyd (1987), D. Upright (1987), Y.-A. Bois (1992 and 1999), and Diane Waldman et al. (1996).

Kelly, Ellsworth (1923– ). American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, born in Newburgh, New York. He studied at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, 1941–2, and then after service in the US Army at the Boston Museum School, 1946–8. From 1948 to 1954 he lived in Paris, then settled in New York. In 1949 he switched from figurative to abstract art and in the mid1950s he became recognized as one of the leading exponents of the Hard-Edge style that was one of the successors to Abstract Expressionism. His paintings are characteristically very clear and simple in construction, sometimes consisting of a number of individual panels placed together, identical in size but each painted a different uniform colour (he started using this formula in 1952). He was also one of the first artists to develop the idea of the shaped canvas. His work has been widely exhibited and he has had numerous public commissions, including a mural for Unesco in Paris (1969). Kelly has also made prints in various techniques and has worked as a sculptor (using painted cut-out metal forms—often industrially manufactured—related to those in his paintings).

Kelly, Ellsworth (b Newburgh, NY, 31 May 1923). American painter, sculptor, and printmaker. In the mid-1950s he became recognized as one of the leading exponents of the Hard-Edge style that was one of the reactions against Abstract Expressionism. His paintings are characteristically very clear and simple in conception, sometimes consisting of a number of individual panels placed together, identical in size but each painted a different uniform colour (he started using this formula in 1952). He was also one of the first artists to develop the idea of the shaped canvas. Kelly has also worked in various printmaking techniques and in sculpture (using painted cut-out metal forms—often industrially manufactured—related to those in his paintings).

Kelly, Ellsworth (1923– ). American painter, sculptor, and printmaker. In the mid-1950s he became recognized as one of the leading exponents of the Hard-Edge style that was one of the reactions against Abstract Expressionism. His paintings are characteristically very clear and simple in conception, sometimes consisting of a number of individual panels placed together, identical in size but each painted a different uniform colour (he started using this formula in 1952). He was also one of the first artists to develop the idea of the shaped canvas. Kelly has also worked in various printmaking techniques and in sculpture (using painted cut-out metal forms—often industrially manufactured—related to those in his paintings).