Back

Ellsworth Kelly

SELECTED WORKS
Peach Branch
1974
Lithograph

Edition of 50
Paper size: 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 inches (120 x 80 cm)
Signed lower right and numbered lower left in graphite
(Inventory #30942)

Cul de Sac
1984
One-color lithograph on Arches 88 paper

Image size:  35 5/8 x 49 3/8 inches  (90.5 x 125.4 cm)
Paper size:  42 5/8 x 56 5/8 inches  (108.3 x 143.8 cm)
Edition of 25
Signed, numbered and dated
(Inventory #27345)

Leaf V
1978
One-color lithograph

Edition of 20
Signed, titled and numbered ‘Kelly Leaf V AP 5/9’ lower right in pencil
Image/paper size:  30 x 42 inches  (76.2 x 106.7 cm)
(Inventory #24147)

Untitled (Gray)
1988
Lithograph in colors

Edition of 18
Image size: 32 x 34 3/4 inches (81.3 x 88.3 cm)
Paper size: 42 1/2 x 46 1/2 inches (108 x 118.1 cm)
Signed and numbered lower right in graphite
(Inventory #32421)

Wild Grape Leaf
1979-1980
Lithograph

Edition of 50
Image/paper size: 27 1/2 x 24 3/4 inches (69.8 x 62.9 cm)
Frame size: 29 1/2 x 27 (74.9 x 68.6 cm)
Signed lower right and numbered lower left in graphite
(Inventory #36958)

Mulberry Leaf
1979-
1980

Lithograph
Paper size: 36 1/2 x 26 5/8 inches (92.7 x 67.6 cm)
Frame size: 38 3/4 x 28 5/8 inches (98.4 x 72.7 cm)
Edition of 50
Signed and numbered lower recto
(Inventory #36955)

Untitled
1994
One-color lithograph

25 3/4 x 30 inches (65.4 x 76.2 cm)
Edition of 30
Signed lower right, numbered lower left
(Inventory #35674)

Sunflower I
1995-2004
Lithograph on Somerset Satin white paper

Edition of 50, 12 AP
Paper size: 37 x 29 inches (94 x 73.7 cm)
Signed and numbered lower right, titled lower left in graphite
(Inventory #33957)

Red Curve
1999
One-color lithograph

Image/paper size: 10 x 7 5/8 inches (25.4 x 19.4 cm)
Edition of 70, 14 SP , 30 AP , II PP
Signed and numbered lower left in graphite
(Inventory #36439)

Two Blacks and White
2000
One-color lithograph

Image/paper size: 30 1/16 x 30 1/16 inches (76.4 x 76.4 cm)
Edition of 46 , 10 AP , II PP
Signed and numbered lower right in graphite
(Inventory #36937)

Wild Grape Leaves II
2004
Lithograph

Image/paper size: 23 x 31 inches (58.4 x 78.7 cm)
Edition of 60
Signed and numbered lower right in graphite
(Inventory #33958)

Dark Purple
2003
One-color lithograph

Paper size: 29 x 23 3/8 inches (73.7 x 59.4 cm)
Frame size: 32 x 25 1/2 inches (81.3 x 64.8 cm)
Edition of 35
Signed and numbered
(Inventory #36380)

Blue Curve/Red Curve
2014
Two-color lithograph on Rives BFK white paper

Edition of 50
Image/paper size: 30 1/8 x 47 1/2 inches (76.5 x 120.7 cm)
Signed and numbered lower right in graphite
(Inventory #31884)

Additional Information

Ellsworth Kelly was born in 1923 in Newburgh, New York. He studied at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from 1941 to 1943. After military service from 1943 to 1945, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1946 to 1948. In 1949, Kelly went to France and enrolled at the École des beaux-arts, Paris, under the GI Bill, although he attended classes infrequently. In France, he discovered Romanesque art and architecture as well as Byzantine art. He was also introduced to Surrealism and Neo-Plasticism, which led him to experiment with automatic drawing and geometric abstraction. In his work Kelly abstracts the forms in his paintings from observations of the real world, such as shadows cast by trees or the spaces between architectural elements.

In 1950, Kelly met Jean Arp and that same year began to make shaped-wood reliefs and collages in which elements were arranged according to the laws of chance. He soon began to make paintings in separate panels that could be recombined to produce alternate compositions, as well as multipanel paintings in which each canvas is painted a single color. During the 1950s, he traveled throughout France, where he met Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Alberto Magnelli, Francis Picabia, and Georges Vantongerloo, among other artists. His first solo show took place at the Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre, Paris, in 1951.

Kelly returned to the United States in 1954, living first in a studio apartment on Broad Street, New York, and then at Coenties Slip in lower Manhattan, where his neighbors would through the years include Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, Fred Mitchell, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. Kelly continued to develop and expand the vocabulary of painting, exploring issues of form and ground with his flatly painted canvases. His first solo show in New York was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, and three years later he was included in 16 Americans at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. In 1958, he also began to make freestanding sculptures. In 1959, art historian Jules Langsner termed the current of American geometric abstraction “Hard-edge painting,” connoting the shaped panels of bright color and rigid form created by Kelly and his contemporaries. Kelly moved out of Manhattan in 1970 and set up a studio in Chatham and a home in nearby Spencertown, New York, where he currently lives and works.

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).

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Fair Fall 2022 Online Edition

October 27, 2022
- October 30, 2022

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Fair Fall 2021 Online Edition

October 15, 2021
- October 31, 2021

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Fair Spring 2021 Online Edition

May 14, 2021
- May 28, 2021

Formed

August 19, 2020
- September 9, 2020

Featuring works by Michael Beatty, Sarah Charlesworth, Ellsworth Kelly, and Martin Puryear

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Fine Art Print Fair, New York 2019

October 23, 2019
- October 27, 2019

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Fine Art Print Fair, New York 2018

October 24, 2018
- October 28, 2018

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Art Fair, New York 2017

October 26, 2017
- October 29, 2017

Between Subjects

December 10, 2016
- January 21, 2017

Featuring works by Josef Albers, Mel Bochner, Jan Dibbets, Bronlyn Jones, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, and Sylvia Plimack Mangold

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Art Fair, New York 2016

November 3, 2016
- November 6, 2016

Block Parts

June 18, 2016
- July 29, 2016

Featuring works by Josef Albers, Robert Barry, Michael Beatty, Mel Bochner, Ellsworth Kelly, Allan McCollum, Liliana Porter, Stephen Prina, Kate Shepherd, Richard Smith, and Ana Tiscornia

Reduce, Repeat, Reuse

June 13, 2015
- July 24, 2015

Featuring works by Peter Downsbrough, Ellsworth Kelly, and Robert Moskowitz

Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) Art Show 2015

March 3, 2015
- March 8, 2015

 

 

Mereology

December 19, 2014
- January 26, 2015

Featuring works by Scott Hadfield, Ellsworth Kelly, William Kentridge, Brice Marden, Kiki Smith, and Shellburne Thurber

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Art Fair, New York 2014

November 5, 2014
- November 9, 2014

Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) Art Show 2014

March 5, 2014
- March 9, 2014

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Art Fair, New York 2013

November 6, 2013
- November 10, 2013

Inflect

April 27, 2013
- June 1, 2013

Featuring works by Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Tara Donovan, Ellsworth Kelly, Annette Lemieux, Robert Rauschenberg, and Haim Steinbach

Abluminal

March 16, 2013
- April 20, 2013

Featuring works by Barbara Broughel, Ellsworth Kelly, Martin Puryear, and Sarah Sze

International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Art Fair, New York 2012

October 31, 2012
- November 4, 2012

Shape Shifting

March 17, 2012
- April 21, 2012

Featuring works by Mel Bochner, Louise Bourgeois, Tara Donovan, Bronlyn Jones, and Ellsworth Kelly

Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) Art Show 2012

March 7, 2012
- March 11, 2012

Surface Area

September 10, 2011
- October 15, 2011

Featuring works by Peter Downsbrough, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Kay Rosen, Robert Ryman, and James Turrell

Moving Patterns

June 16, 2010
- August 3, 2010

Featuring works by Jenny Holzer, Ellsworth Kelly, Sherrie Levine, Charles LeDray, Robert Moskowitz, Liliana Porter, Kiki Smith,  and Shellburne Thurber

Artists Coming Together

September 11, 2004
- November 2, 2004

Featuring works by John Baldessari, Cecily Brown, Frank Gehry, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Elizabeth Murray, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Rothenberg, Ed Ruscha, and Richard Serra

 

Print Publishers Spotlight: Gemini G.E.L.

July 1, 2004
- July 30, 2004

Featuring works by Ann Hamilton, Ellsworth Kelly, Susan Rothenberg, and Richard Serra

Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) Art Fair

February 19, 2004
- February 23, 2004

Large Scale Prints

July 8, 1992
- August 1, 1992

Featuring works by Jim Dine, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Mark Luyten, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Julian Schnabel, Richard Serra, Frank Stella

Surface to Surface

January 11, 1992
- February 12, 1992

Featuring works by Dan Flavin, Jaqueline Humpries, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Fred Sandback, Sean Scully, Pat Steir, Robert Therrien, and Richard Tuttle