Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly was an eminent American artist known for his abstract paintings. His use of bright colors, and simple shapes contributed to the discourse of 20th-century painting. “I have worked to free shape from its ground, and then to work the shape so that it has a definite relationship to the space around it,” he once explained. “So that it has a clarity and a measure within itself of its parts (angles, curves, edges, and mass); and so that, with color and tonality, the shape finds its own space and always demands its freedom and separateness.” Born on May 31, 1923, in Newburgh, NY, he went on to study technical drawing and design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In 1952 he established himself alongside Frank Stella and Al Held in rejecting the gestural brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism with his pared-down Color-Field paintings. He died on December 27, 2015, at the age of 92 in Spencertown, NY.
Museum Collections
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- Museum of Modern Art, NYC
- Tate Gallery, London
- National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC