Ellsworth Kelly

Posted by Fabio 17 June 2012

Ellsworth Kelly, is one of the world’s greatest living artists. Since the 1940s he has explored the possibilities of abstraction to create paintings and sculptures which reveal an extraordinary vision. Kelly’s skill in working with form, colour, space and line to create monumental visual statements is a result of his acute spatial sensibility, and an understanding of the potential in the fusion of these elements.

Kelly has always maintained that his elemental abstraction remains rooted in the world in which he lives: in the shapes and forms that surround us and especially in the shadows and spaces between things.

“Since birth we get accustomed to seeing and thinking at the same time. But I think that if you can turn off the mind and look at things only with your eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract”_Ellsworth Kelly

Throughout his extraordinary career Kelly has always been drawn to nature and beginning in 1949, while living in Paris (and influenced in this choice of subject by Matisse and Arp) he began to draw simple plant and seaweed forms. In his drawing of fruits, flowers and leaves Kelly’s concern is with the essence of each plant, and in their purity of line and shape these lithographic drawings provide a critical link to the character of his abstraction.

www.ellsworthkelly.org