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Ellsworth Kelly
This book explores the most recent paintings and sculptures of Ellsworth Kelly, celebrated as one of the world’s most
important living artists. Reproducing over thirty works made in the past three years, this volume explores the artist’s
ongoing rigorous investigation of color and form.
Kelly’s chromatics are balanced by his calculated compositions, whereby the literal shapes of the canvases, often
joined and overlapped, enter a dialogue with the colors’ tendency to advance and recede. These particular
constructions have appeared in the artist’s work since the early 1950s; over half a century later, Kelly continues to find
new ways to push these forms further.
Also pictured are the artist’s ten most recent monumental sculptures. These include a 50-foot tall stainless steel totem
that the artist installed at the edge of a lake, the sculpture’s remarkable form mirrored in the water’s surface. The
enormous wall panels commissioned for the United States Embassy in Beijing are reproduced as well.
The scholars Roberta Bernstein and Herbert Muschamp each contribute an insightful essay exploring and situating the
new work.
Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York, in 1923. His first one-person exhibition was held in 1951 in Paris,
where the artist was studying on the G.I. Bill following World War II. He returned to the United States in 1954, renting
a studio in downtown New York City, and his position among America’s most esteemed painters began to take form.
Since that time, the artist’s work has been the subject of numerous major retrospectives worldwide and is presently
included in all of the most important public collections of contemporary art. Many of the works reproduced in this
volume are on view at the Serpentine Gallery, London, from March through May 2006. Kelly currently lives and works in
upstate New York.
Exhibition: Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, November / December 2006
Ellsworth Kelly
With text by Herbert Muschamp and Roberto Bernstein
Book design by Ellsworth Kelly and Gerhard Steidl
112 pages with 30 color plates
9.4 x 12.9 in. / 24 x 33 cm
Clothbound hardcover with dust jacket
US $ 45.00 / £ 28.00 / R 40.00
ISBN 3-86521-227-1
ISBN-13 978-3-86521-227-6
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