Ellsworth Kelly facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ellsworth Kelly
|
|
|---|---|
.jpg)
Ellsworth Kelly arrives at LACMA's gala opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum on February 9, 2008, in Los Angeles
|
|
| Born | May 31, 1923 Newburgh, New York, U.S.
|
| Died | December 27, 2015 (aged 92) Spencertown, New York, U.S.
|
| Education | Pratt Institute École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
| Known for | Painting, sculpture, printmaking |
| Awards | Praemium Imperiale |
Ellsworth Kelly (born May 31, 1923 – died December 27, 2015) was an American artist. He was known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. His art often featured clear lines, bright colors, and simple shapes. He is connected to art styles like hard-edge painting, Color field painting, and minimalism. Kelly lived and worked in Spencertown, New York.
Contents
Early Life and Discovering Art
Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York. He was the second of three sons. His family later moved to Oradell, New Jersey. This town had about 7,500 people. They lived near the Oradell Reservoir.
When he was eight or nine, his grandmother introduced him to ornithology, which is the study of birds. This sparked his interest in shapes and colors. The artist John James Audubon, famous for his bird paintings, greatly influenced Kelly. Some people believe Kelly's well-known two- and three-color paintings were inspired by the colorful birds he saw as a child. Kelly said he was often alone and became a "loner" when he was young.
School Days
Kelly went to public school. His art classes focused on different materials and encouraged creativity. His art teacher, Dorothy Lange Opsut, saw his talent and encouraged him to pursue art. His parents preferred he learn a technical skill. So, Kelly first studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1941 until he joined the Army in 1943.
Serving in the Military
In 1943, Kelly joined the U.S. military. He asked to be in the 603rd Engineers Camouflage Battalion, which had many artists. He trained in Colorado and later in Maryland. During World War II, he served in the Ghost Army. This was a special United States Army unit. They used inflatable tanks and trucks to trick the enemy about where Allied forces were. Being around military camouflage taught him a lot about art. It showed him how to use shapes and shadows. Kelly served with this unit until the war in Europe ended. The Ghost Army received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2024.
Art School After the War
After the war, Kelly used the G.I. Bill to continue his art education. From 1946–47, he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He used the museum's art collections to learn. Then, he went to the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In Boston, he had his first group art show. He also taught art classes.
In Paris, Kelly developed his unique art style. He didn't go to many classes. Instead, he explored the city's rich art scene. He was influenced by artists like Jean Arp and Constantin Brâncuși. Brâncuși's simple natural forms especially impacted him. Visiting studios of artists like Alberto Giacometti also changed his view of art.
His Art Career Begins
After six years abroad, Kelly returned to America in 1954. He had only sold one painting. He found the art world in New York "very tough." Many people didn't understand how his art fit with the popular styles of the time.
In May 1956, Kelly had his first New York City art show at Betty Parsons' gallery. His art seemed more European than what was popular in New York. Later, three of his works were chosen for a show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His pieces were very different from the others. For example, his Painting in Three Panels was noted because it used three separate canvases. Critics wondered why he did this.
Kelly later moved from New York City to Spencertown in 1970. His partner, photographer Jack Shear, joined him there in 1984. Kelly worked in a large studio in Spencertown. In 2015, Kelly gave his design for a special building to the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. This building, called Austin, is his only designed building and his largest work. It opened in 2018.
Ellsworth Kelly passed away in Spencertown, New York, on December 27, 2015, at age 92.
Painting Style
While in Paris, Kelly began making his first abstract paintings in 1949. He observed how light looked on water. This led to his painting Seine (1950), which used black and white rectangles. In 1951, he started a series of collages called Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance. He used numbered slips of paper to arrange colors on a grid.
.jpg)
Kelly was a leader in hard-edge painting in the 1940s and 1950s. This style uses sharp, clear lines and shapes. In 1952, he discovered Monet's later works. This inspired him to work on very large paintings. He explored ideas of repeating patterns and using single colors. From then on, he only painted abstract art. By the late 1950s, his paintings focused on shapes and flat areas of color. Sometimes, his canvases were not rectangular.
In the 1960s, he started using canvases with unusual angles. Yellow Piece (1966) was his first "shaped canvas." This meant the canvas itself became part of the artwork's shape. Its curved corners and single color made the wall behind it part of the picture.
In the 1970s, he added curved shapes to his art. Green White (1968) was the first time he used a triangle. This shape appeared often in his later work. The painting uses two separate, shaped canvases. A large green trapezoid is placed above a smaller white triangle. This creates a new geometric design.
After moving to Spencertown, he rented a large studio. This allowed him to work on bigger pieces. He created the Chatham Series, which included 14 paintings. Each work was shaped like an inverted "L." They were made of two joined canvases, each a different solid color. He carefully chose the size and color of each panel for balance.
Another large series, Gray, started in 1972. It was completed in 1983. These works used only gray colors. Kelly intended them as a statement against war. In 1979, he used curves in two-color paintings made of separate panels.
In his later paintings, Kelly simplified his colors even more. He also introduced new forms. He often started with a white rectangular canvas. Then, he placed a shaped canvas, usually black, on top.
Kelly once said about his art: "I think what we all want from art is a sense of fixity, a sense of opposing the chaos of daily living. This an illusion, of course. Canvas rots. Paint changes color. But you keep trying to freeze the world as if you could make it last forever. In a sense, what I've tried to capture is the reality of flux, to keep art an open, incomplete situation, to get at the rapture of seeing." He also said, "I realized I didn't want to compose pictures … I wanted to find them. I felt that my vision was choosing things out there in the world and presenting them."
Prints and Drawings
Kelly made drawings of plants and flowers from the late 1940s. Ailanthus (1948) was his first plant drawing in Boston. Hyacinth (1949) was his first in Paris. He began drawing simple plant and seaweed forms in 1949. These plant studies were mostly outline drawings of leaves, stems, and flowers. He used clean pencil or pen strokes.
He started making prints seriously in the mid-1960s. He created his Suite of Twenty-Seven Lithographs (1964–66) in Paris. A lithograph is a print made from a drawing on a stone or metal plate. This was when he made his first plant lithographs. From 1970, he worked mostly with Gemini G.E.L.. His Suite of Plant Lithographs series grew to 72 prints and many drawings of plants. His Purple/Red/Gray/Orange (1988) was 18 feet long. It might be the largest single-sheet lithograph ever made.
Sculpture Work
While Kelly is famous for his paintings, he also created sculptures throughout his career. In 1958, he made Concorde Relief I. This was a wood sculpture for a wall. It explored how two rectangular shapes layered on top of each other looked. He made 30 wood sculptures in his lifetime. From 1959, he started making freestanding sculptures that were folded. The Rocker series began after he played with a coffee cup lid. He cut and folded it, then rocked it back and forth. This led to his first sculpture that could stand freely, called Pony. It was named after a child's hobby horse.
In 1973, Kelly began making large outdoor sculptures. He stopped painting the surfaces. Instead, he used unvarnished steel, aluminum, or bronze. These often looked like tall, symbolic poles, like Curve XXIII (1981). His freestanding sculptures could be up to 15 feet tall. His wall reliefs could be over 14 feet wide. Kelly's sculptures are known for their "absolute simplicity and clarity of form." In the 1980s, he focused as much on sculpture as painting. He made over 60% of his 140 sculptures during this time.
Kelly often started with a drawing. Then, he might make a print from it. From the print, he could create a freestanding piece. This piece could then become a sculpture. His sculptures are meant to be simple and easy to see quickly. They have smooth, flat surfaces that seem separate from the space around them. This flatness makes it hard to tell the difference between the front and back.
Artistic Style and Influences
Art expert William Rubin noted that Kelly's art developed from his own ideas. It wasn't just a reaction to other art styles. Many of his paintings use a single, often bright, color. Some canvases are shaped unusually, called "shaped canvases." The lines and shapes in his art are very precise, showing a sense of perfection. This can be seen in his piece Block Island Study (1959).
Kelly's time in the military influenced his art. His work with military camouflage taught him about shapes and shadows. It showed him how things can be built up and taken apart visually. This was key to his early art training. A friend, Ralph Coburn, showed him "automatic drawing." This is drawing without looking at the paper. These techniques helped Kelly loosen his drawing style. They also broadened his ideas about what art could be.
Kelly admired artists like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. They inspired him to see things in different ways. He also learned to work in various art forms. Piet Mondrian influenced the abstract shapes he used in his paintings and sculptures. Kelly was first influenced by Romanesque and Byzantine art and architecture in Paris. His introduction to Surrealism and Neo-Plasticism also made him explore abstract geometric forms.
Curating Exhibitions
Kelly also helped organize art shows. In 2014, he put together a show of Matisse drawings. This was at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. In 2015, he curated "Monet/Kelly" at the Clark Art Institute.
In 1990, Kelly curated "Artist's Choice: Ellsworth Kelly Fragmentation and the Single Form." This show was at the Museum of Modern Art.
Personal Life
In 1956, Kelly met artist Robert Indiana. They lived in the same building and became partners. Kelly was a mentor to Indiana. They separated around 1964.
From 1984 until his death, Kelly lived with his husband, photographer Jack Shear. Shear is now the director of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation.
Selected Artworks
- Red Yellow Blue White and Black, Red Yellow Blue White and Black II (1953), oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
- White Disk, White Disk III (1961), oil paint on wood, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
- 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 (1956–57), anodized aluminum, Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Red Orange (Inca) (1959), oil on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
- 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
- High Yellow (1960), oil on canvas, Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX
- Nine Squares (1976–77), oil on canvas, Collection of Tate
- "Spectrum VIII" (2014), acrylic on canvas, 12 joined panels, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
- Austin (2015), structure, Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX
- Barcelona has sculptures by Ellsworth Kelly (1987). A "Totem" piece is at the entrance of the Parc de la Creueta del Coll. The Plaça del General Moragues has two pieces: another totem and a dihedrally shaped sculpture.
Art Exhibitions
Kelly's first solo art show was in Paris in 1951. His first solo show in New York was in 1956. In 1959, his work was part of the important "Sixteen Americans" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. He was invited to show at the São Paulo Biennial in 1961. His art was also shown at the documenta exhibition several times. A room of his paintings was included in the 2007 Venice Biennale.
Kelly's first big career review show was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1973. Since then, his work has been featured in many major exhibitions. These include shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1982), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1996), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1998).
In 1993, an exhibition called "Ellsworth Kelly: The French Years, 1948–54" was held in Paris. It focused on his time there. In 2008, the Musée d'Orsay honored Kelly with a show comparing his work to Paul Cézanne. The Haus der Kunst showed a large collection of his black and white works in 2012.
For his 90th birthday in 2013, several museums held exhibitions. The National Gallery of Art showed his prints. The Barnes Foundation displayed five of his sculptures. The Phillips Collection showed his panel paintings. The Museum of Modern Art opened a show of his "Chatham Series."
In 2023, a major show called "Ellsworth Kelly at 100" was organized by the Glenstone Museum. It was planned to travel to Paris and Doha.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
- 1951 Kelly Peintures et reliefs, Galerie 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
- 1985 Ellsworth Kelly: White Panel II", High Museum of Art, Atlanta
- 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
- 2010 Ellsworth Kelly: Drawings 1954–1962, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom
- 2012 Ellsworth Kelly: Schwarz und Weiss, Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden
- 2014 Monet | Kelly, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Public Art Projects
In 1957, Kelly was asked to create a 65-foot-long wall sculpture for a building in Philadelphia. This was his largest work at the time. It was called Sculpture for a Large Wall (1957). Kelly created many public art pieces after this. These include:
- Wright Curve (1966), a steel sculpture for the Guggenheim Museum.
- A mural for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1969).
- Curve XXII (I Will) at Lincoln Park in Chicago (1981).
- A commission by I. M. Pei for the Raffles City building in Singapore (1985).
- The Houston Triptych (1986) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
- Totem (1987), a sculpture for a park in Barcelona.
- The Dallas Panels (Blue Green Black Red) (1989) for the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas.
- A sculpture for the Nestlé headquarters in Switzerland (1989).
- Gaul (1993), a large sculpture in Nîmes, France.
- A two-part memorial for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (1993).
- Large Berlin panels for the Deutscher Bundestag in Berlin (1998).
- The Boston Panels for the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston. These are 21 bright aluminum panels throughout the building.
In 2013, Ellsworth Kelly was asked to create "Spectrum VIII" (completed 2014). This is a large multi-panel painting that acts as a curtain for the Auditorium at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
Kelly's Blue Black (2001), 28 feet tall, was made for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. The large bronze Untitled (2005) was made for the courtyard of the Phillips Collection. In 2005, Kelly was asked to create a special work for the Modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. He made White Curve, his largest wall sculpture, which has been on display since 2009. Kelly also installed Berlin Totem, a 40-foot stainless-steel sculpture, at the Embassy of the United States, Berlin in 2008.
In 1986, Kelly designed his first free-standing building. It was for a private collector but was never built. In 2015, the Blanton Museum of Art acquired his design for a 2,715-square-foot stone building. It includes 14 black-and-white marble panels and colored glass windows. The museum planned to build it on its grounds at the University of Texas, Austin. The building, called Austin, opened in February 2018. It is seen as a major achievement in Kelly's career.
In 1968, Kelly was asked to create a large outdoor sculpture for the Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY. The sculpture, Yellow Blue, was inspired by the plaza. It is Kelly's largest standing sculpture, at nine feet high and almost sixteen feet across. It was his first steel sculpture and the only one painted.
Art Collections
In 1957, the Whitney Museum of American Art bought his painting Atlantic. This was Kelly's first artwork bought by a museum. Today, his art is in many public collections. These include:
- The Centre Pompidou, Paris
- The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
- The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Albany, NY
- The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY
- Tate Modern, London
In 1999, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced it bought 22 of his works. These included paintings, wall reliefs, and sculptures. In 2003, the Menil Collection received Kelly's Tablet. This included 188 framed works on paper, like sketches and collages.
Awards and Recognition
Ellsworth Kelly received many awards for his art, including:
- 1963: Brandeis Creative Arts Award
- 1964: Carnegie International
- 1974: Member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters
- 1987: Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (a French honor)
- 1999: Edward MacDowell Medal
- 2000: Praemium Imperiale (a major international art award)
- 2013: Honorary doctorate from Brandeis University
- 2013: National Medal of Arts, presented by the President of the United States
He also received many honorary degrees from universities like Bard College, Royal College of Art, Harvard University, and Williams College.
Kelly Postage Stamps
In January 2019, the United States Postal Service announced a set of stamps honoring Kelly's artwork. The stamps were issued on May 31, 2019. They feature ten of his works, including Yellow White, Colors for a Large Wall, and Red Blue. The USPS noted Kelly's unique abstract style.
Art Market
The art dealer Betty Parsons gave Kelly his first solo exhibition in 1956. In 1965, he started showing with the Sidney Janis Gallery. In the 1970s and 1980s, his work was sold by Leo Castelli and Blum Helman in New York. In 1992, he joined the Matthew Marks Gallery and the Anthony d’Offay Gallery. From 1964, he made prints and sculptures with Gemini G.E.L. and Tyler Graphics Ltd.
In 2014, Kelly's painting Red Curve (1982) sold for $4.5 million at an auction. The highest price paid for his work was $9.8 million in November 2019 for Red Curve VII. This was at a Christie's auction.
See also
In Spanish: Ellsworth Kelly para niños
Images for kids
-
Kelly's Austin on the grounds of the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas.
.jpg)
