Ellsworth
Kelly United States
b. 1923 "The
Wadsworth Antheneum: Ten Works
by Ten Artists," 1964
Silkscreen
24 x 20 in.
Sweeney Art Gallery Permanent Collection
64.1.3
Ellsworth Kelly has filled a long and active career exploring the
visual possibilities of intense primary colors, geometric forms and
their interaction with space. He is best known for his panel paintings
in which the canvas itself is shaped and then painted in a solid,
brilliant, flat color. Kelly's style is a reaction to the expressive
gestural brushstrokes of the Abstract
Expressionists.
He pushes the abstraction
even farther towards pure formal elements by eliminating any trace
of the artists' process in the painting. In spite of the extreme abstraction
of the surfaces Kelly drew his forms from nature and architecture.
He would collect pictures of his surroundings as sources for ideas.
