Ellsworth Kelly

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Ellsworth Kelly (2008)

Ellsworth Kelly (born May 31, 1923 in Newburgh , Orange County , New York , † December 27, 2015 in Spencertown , New York ) was an American painter and sculptor . Kelly overcame the concept of the right-angled image by creating compositions in which monochrome color forms became paintings in their own right. He was a major exponent of color field painting and hard edge .

Life

Ellsworth Kelly was born in 1923 the son of a social security body in Newburgh and raised in Oradell ( New Jersey on). From 1941 to 1943 he studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn . He served from 1943 to 1945 in World War II , where he took part in the Battle of Brittany . After the end of the war, Kelly attended the "School of The Museum of Fine Arts" in Boston from 1946 to 1948 and then went to Paris to study at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts . In 1950 he taught for a year at the American School in Paris and attended the studios of Constantin Brâncuși , Alexander Calder , Francis Picabia , Georges Vantongerloo , Alberto Magnelli , Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp . In 1954 he returned to the United States and moved into a studio on Broad Street in New York. A little later he moved into a loft in Coenties Slip in the neighborhood of Robert Indiana , Agnes Martin , James Rosenquist and Jack Youngerman. In 1970 he moved into a studio in Chatham and a house near Spencertown , where he lived with his partner, photographer Jack Shear.

plant

Sculpture by Kelly in the garden of the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel , Switzerland

Ellsworth Kelly's pictures, which belong to the Hard Edge style , are characterized by geometric surfaces that clash with intense colors, with hard and sharp contours. Kelly created his works in abstract form with the utmost clarity and simplicity. Since 1945 he has been painting black and white pictures. He proportioned the panels or the canvases stretched on stretcher frames in such a way that the independence and uniformity of the form were preserved. The shapes of the panels followed predetermined systems or geometrical calculations. In the following years Kelly turned away from the purely geometrical panels, painted his panels in black, white and gray and tried out variations of panel pairs that are connected along a diagonal. In 1958 he began to produce free-standing sculptures and since 1973 totem pole-like sculptures made of steel and aluminum .

As a curator , Kelly organized an exhibition of Henri Matisse drawings in 2014 at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in South Hadley , Massachusetts . In 2015 the exhibition Monet / Kelly, curated by him, followed at the Clark Art Institute , Williamstown , Massachusetts.

Awards and honors

Works (selection)

Exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (ed.): Insights. The 20th Century in the North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection, Düsseldorf , Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit 2000; ISBN 3-7757-0853-7
  • The 100 of the century - painters . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-16456-6

Filmography

  • 2011: Ellsworth Kelly - Abstract Beauty , documentary (BR), directed by Birgitta Ashoff

Web links

Commons : Ellsworth Kelly  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ellsworth Kelly, an Artist Who Mixed Abstract With Simplicity, Dies at 92
  2. The 100 of the Century - Painters . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, p. 86
  3. Painter and Sculptor: Ellsworth Kelly is Dead , Spiegel Online , December 28, 2015
  4. Carol Vogel: Ellsworth Kelly At Work The New York Times , October 16, 2014.
  5. Holland Cotter: When an Abstract Artist Falls in Love With Monet: 'Monet / Kelly' at Clark Art Institute, Ellsworth Kelly Falls for Monet The New York Times , February 1, 2015.
  6. ^ Nationalacademy.org: National Academicians: Kelly, Ellsworth, NA 1994 ( June 19, 2015 memento in the Internet Archive ) (accessed December 28, 2015)
  7. Alexej von Jawlensky Prize 2010 ( Memento from August 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  8. welt.de: Gold medal for "The World of Ellsworth Kelly" (accessed on March 31, 2015)
  9. Irene Netta, Ursula Keltz: 75 years of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich . Ed .: Helmut Friedel. Self-published by the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88645-157-7 , p. 230 .