Ellsworth Kelly – Blue Yellow Red

Description

Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Yellow Red is an original Ellsworth Kelly Lithograph print in three colors on special Arjomari paper with the publisher’s blind stamp lower right. This print is from the original signed and numbered edition of 75. “Blue Yellow Red” is a color variation of two intersected-parallelogram paintings of 1968, Red White Blue (EK#407) and Red Yellow Blue (EK#408), a four lithographs Axom 62, 63, 74, and 75.

Kelly’s first retrospective was held at MoMA in 1973. The following year, he began an ongoing series of totemic sculptures in steel and aluminum. He traveled throughout Spain, Italy, and France in 1977, the same year that his work was included in Documenta in Kassel, West Germany. He has executed many public commissions, including a mural for UNESCO in Paris (1969), a sculpture for the city of Barcelona (1978), and a memorial for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. (1993). Kelly’s extensive work has been recognized in numerous retrospectives, including a sculpture exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1982); an exhibition of works on paper and a show of his print works that traveled extensively in the United States and Canada (1987–88); and a career retrospective organized by the Guggenheim Museum (1996), which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Tate Gallery, London; and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Since then, solo exhibitions of Kelly’s work have been mounted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1998); Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1999); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2007); and MoMA (2007).

Ellsworth Kelly has been a widely influential force in the post-war art world. He first rose to critical acclaim in the 1950s with his bright, multi-paneled and largely monochromatic canvases. Maintaining a persistent focus on the dynamic relationships between shape, form and color, Kelly was one of the first artists to create irregularly shaped canvases. His subsequent layered reliefs, flat sculptures, and line drawings further challenged viewers’ conceptions of space. While not adhering to any one artistic movement, Kelly vitally influenced the development of Minimalism, Hard-edge painting, Color Field, and Pop art.

Throughout his long career, Ellsworth Kelly’s central point of departure has been the forms and patterns found in nature and the world around him. One of America’s most prominent abstract artists, but unlike many of his peers, Kelly cannot be identified with a single art movement or school.

Shortly after graduating high school in 1942, Kelly was drafted into the Army. At the end of the war, he studied for three years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He then moved to Paris, which served as his base as he traveled throughout Europe during the next six years. In France, the young American painter was greatly influenced by both the new and old: from the innovations of artists like Henri Matisse and Jean Arp to Romanesque churches and museums filled with ancient and medieval Greek, Egyptian, and Byzantine art.

During his time in France, Kelly explored a variety of abstract styles. On returning to America in 1954, he began developing the individual approach that would establish his reputation and influence several generations of artists. Working on a large scale, Kelly combined blocks of single colors with silhouetted and simplified shapes, often inspired by nature. He also began producing sculptures—both freestanding pieces and wall reliefs. Over a career spanning more than fifty years, Kelly’s work has always remained rooted in the forms of observed reality. He has been the subject of major exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and his work is in many public collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and Tate Modern, London. Kelly lives and works in Spencertown, New York.

Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Yellow Red

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