Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly, The Meschers, 1951, 59 x 59 inches, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Born	May 31, 1923 (1923-05-31) (age 86) Newburgh, New York
Nationality	American
Field	Painting, sculpture
Training	Pratt Institute École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Influenced by	Henri Matisse Pablo Picasso Romanesque and Byzantine art Surrealism Neo-Plasticism

Ellsworth Kelly (b. May 31, 1923) is an American painter and sculptor associated with Hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and the Minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques that emphasize the simplicity of form. Kelly often employs bright colors to enhance his works. Ellsworth Kelly lives and works in Spencertown, New York.

Childhood

Kelly was born the second son out of three boys to Allan Howe Kelly and Florence Bithens Kelly in Newburgh, New York, a town approximately 60 miles north of New York City.^[1] His father was an insurance company executive with Scottish-Irish and German decent. His mother was a former schoolteacher from Welsh and Pennsylvania-German stock. His family moved from Newburgh, New York, to New Jersey shortly after he was born. Kelly remembers his mother moving his family around each year to a different house. They lived in many places in New Jersey both in and around the Hackensack area. Many of Kelly’s memories are centered on the time they lived in Oradell, New Jersey a town of nearly 7,500 people at the time. They lived near the Oradell Reservoir where his paternal grandmother Rosenlieb introduced him to bird watching at the age of eight or nine. This introduction to bird watching enabled Kelly to train his eye and develop his appreciation for the physical reality of the world by focusing in on nature’s shapes. This is where he developed his passion for form and color. He continued to further expand his knowledge on this particular passion by studying the works of Louis Agassiz Fuertes and John James Audubon. Audubon had a particularly strong influence on Kelly’s work throughout his career. Author E.C. Goossen speculates that the two and three-color paintings (such as Three Panels: Red Yellow Blue, I 1963) for which Kelly is so well known can be traced to his bird watching, and his acquaintance with the two and three-color birds he so frequently watched at such an early age. Kelly has said he was constantly alone as a young boy and became somewhat of a "loner". He was also afflicted by a slight stutter that persisted into his teenage years.^[1]

Education

Kelly’s schooling from the elementary to the high school level followed the conventional public school curriculum, which included art classes that stressed materials and sought to develop the "artistic imagination". This curriculum was typical of the broader trend in schooling that had emerged from the Progressive education theories promulgated by the Columbia University Teacher's College, at which the American modernist painter Arthur Wesley Dow had taught.^[1] His parents were reluctant to support Kelly's training in the arts, but a school teacher offered the necessary encouragement.^[2] As his parents would only fund technical study, Kelly was educated first at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, which he attended from 1941 to 1943, until he was inducted into the Army on New Year’s Day, 1943. Upon his discharge at the end of World War II, Kelly took advantage of the generous G.I. Bill education provisions to study from 1946 to 1947 at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he haunted the collections of that city's museums, and then at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. There he attended classes infrequently, but again immersed himself in the rich artistic resources of the city.^[3] It was in Paris that Kelly established his aesthetic.^[4]

Military

Upon entering military service in 1943 he requested to be assigned to the 603rd Engineers Camouflage Battalion, which was normal for artists at the time to do. He was inducted at Fort Dix, New Jersey and waited there several weeks for transfer orders that never came. He was then sent off to Camp Hale, Colorado where he trained with mountain ski troops. He had never skied before. His transfer came in six to eight weeks later and he went to Fort Meade, Maryland.^[1] During World War II, he served, alongside other artists and designers, in a deception unit known as The Ghost Army. 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. He had a lot of exposure to military camouflage during the time he served. His exposure to the visual art of camouflage can be seen as part of his basic training.^[1] Kelly served with the unit from 1943 until the end of the European phase of the war.

Career

Kelly decided to return to America in 1954 after being abroad for six years. His decision to venture back into the New York art scene was sparked after reading a review of an Ad Reinhardt exhibit, to which he felt his work related. Upon his return to New York he found the art world “very tough.”^[1] The acceptance of his art was anything but rapid. Although Kelly can now be considered an essential innovator and contributor to the American art movement, he was not always seen in such a positive light. It was hard for many to find the connection between Kelly’s art and the dominant stylistic trends.^[4] Kelly's first solo exhibition was held at the Galerie Arnaud, Paris, 1951. In May 1956 Kelly had his first New York exhibition at Betty Parsons’ Gallery. The art he showed in this exhibit was considered by many in the art world to have more of a European flair. He showed at Betty Parsons’ Gallery in the fall of 1957. He had three pieces, Atlantic, Bar, and Painting in Three Panels selected and shown for the Whitney Museum of American Art's show "Young America 1957.” His pieces were considered radically different from the other twenty-nine artists’ work. Painting in Three Panels, for example, was particularly noted and questioned for the idea of having more than one canvas used to create one piece was unheard of at this time.^[1] Critic Michael Plante commented on this use of multiple-panels by noting that more often than not Kelly’s multiple-panel pieces were cramped in accordance to the installations restrictions, which resulted in a downplay of the interaction between the pieces and the architecture of the room.^[5]

Sculpture

Although Kelly may be better known for his paintings, he has also pursued sculpture throughout his career. Kelly’s sculpture “is founded on its adherence to absolute simplicity and clarity of form.”^[6] Although the source of the piece is usually unidentifiable to the viewer's eye, there is almost always a source behind the forms he creates. Kelly creates his pieces using a succession of ideas on various forms. He may start with a drawing, enhance the drawing to create a print, take the print and create a freestanding piece, which is then made into a sculpture. Kelly’s sculptures are meant to be entirely simple and can been viewed quickly, often only in one glance. The viewer observes smooth, flat surfaces that are secluded from the space that surrounds them. This sense of flatness and minimalism make it hard to tell the difference between the foreground and background.^[6] Kelly's "Blue Disc" was included in the seminal 1966 exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York entitled, "Primary Structures" alongside many much younger artists just beginning to work with minimal forms.

Style

William Rubin noted that “Kelly’s development had been resolutely inner-directed: neither a reaction to Abstract Expressionism nor the outcome of a dialogue with his contemporaries.”^[7] Many of his paintings consist of a single (usually bright) color, with some canvases being of irregular shape, sometimes called "shaped canvases." The quality of line seen in his paintings and in the form of his shaped canvases is very subtle, and implies perfection. This is demonstrated in his piece Block Island Study 1959.

Influences

Kelly’s background in the military has been suggested as a source of the seriousness of his works.^[1] While serving time in the army, Kelly was exposed to and influenced by the camouflage with which his specific battalion worked. This close contact helped enlighten him on the use of form and shadow as well as the construction and deconstruction of the visible. It was a basic part of Kelly’s early education as an artist.^[1] Ralph Coburn, a friend of Kelly’s from Boston, introduced the technique of automatic drawing to him while he was visiting Kelly in Paris. Kelly embraced this technique of arriving at an image without looking at the sheet of paper upon which the image is drawn. These techniques helped Kelly in loosening his particular drawing style and broaden his acceptance of what he believed to be art.^[1] Kelly’s illness and coexistent depression may possibly be related to his use of black and white during his last year in Paris.^[6] The influence of Kelly’s admiration for Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso are apparent in his work. His ability to view things in various ways and work in different mediums is in thanks to them.^[4] Piet Mondrian influences the different forms he uses in both his paintings and sculptures for they are nonobjective.^[4] Kelly was first influenced by the art and architecture of the Romanesque and Byzantine eras while he was studying in Paris.^[4] His introduction to Surrealism and Neo-Plasticism influenced his work and caused him to test the abstraction of geometric forms.^[4]

Artworks

• Window, Museum of Modern Art, Paris, 1949, oil and wood on canvas, Private Collection
• Spectrum of Colors Arranged by Chance, 1951-53, oil on wood, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Black Ripe, 1955, oil on canvas, Collection of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson
• Sculpture for a Large Wall, 1957, anodized aluminum, Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Red Blue Green, 1963, oil on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
• Curve IX, 1974, polished aluminum, Private Collection
• Houston Triptych, 1986, bronze, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• Three Panels: Orange, Dark Gray, Green, 1986, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Red Curves, 1996, oil on canvas, Private Collection

Exhibitions

• 1951 Kelly Peintures et reliefsGalerie Arnaud, Paris
• 1956 Betty Parsons Gallery, New York
• 1957 Betty Parsons Gallery, New York
• 1957 Young America 1957, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• 1973 Ellsworth Kelly, Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 1977 Ellsworth Kelly: Paintings, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
• 1982 Ellsworth Kelly: Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• 1987 Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper, Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth
• 1994 Ellsworth Kelly: Recent Paintings, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
• 1996 Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective, Guggenheim Museum, New York
• 2002 Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
• 2003 Ellsworth Kelly: The Self-Portrait Drawings, 1944-1992, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
• 2006 Ellsworth Kelly: New Paintings, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

References

External links

• Ellsworth Kelly in St Ives exhibition at Tate St Ives, UK, 2006
• Ellsworth Kelly in "Blue Green Black Red: The Dallas Panels" on the north wall of the main lobby at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, Texas
• Biography from the Museum of Modern Art, includes selected images and bibliography
• Biography from Guggenheim Museum includes selected works, and suggested reading list.
• VernissageTV Interview with Ellsworth Kelly at the Art 39 Basel Fair.