On View
Not on viewObject number2009.35
Black
Artist
Ellsworth Kelly
(American, 1923 - 2015)
Date1964
Mediumlithograph
Dimensionssheet: 35 1/4 × 24 in. (89.5 × 61 cm)
image: 25 3/4 × 19 in. (65.4 × 48.3 cm)
mat: 40 × 30 in. (101.6 × 76.2 cm)
image: 25 3/4 × 19 in. (65.4 × 48.3 cm)
mat: 40 × 30 in. (101.6 × 76.2 cm)
Credit LineBequest of Charlotte Collins from the Charles and Charlotte Collins Collection
Exhibition History"A Passion for Collecting: Prints of the 1960s and '70s from the Collins Collection," KIA Galleries 2&5 (Nov. 13, 2010 - Jan. 2, 2011).
"Drawn to Abstraction," Charles H. MacNider Museum of Art, Mason City, IA (June 24 - August 20, 2016).
"Drawn to Abstraction," Sardoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA (August 25 - November 1, 2020).Label TextEllsworth Kelly’s abstract works are minimalist distillations of forms and contours he observes in nature. Even after turning to abstract painting in 1949, he continued to sketch spare line-drawings that outlined the essential form of common subjects such as leaves, fruit, people, and architecture. This print demonstrates the limited use of just two strong colors and hard-edged forms typical of Kelly’s paintings. Like his contemporaries, Albers and Anuszkiewicz, Kelly experimented with color interactions by reprinting a form in different color combinations. This black-on-white form also exists in yellow-on-white within the Suite of Twenty-Seven Color Lithographs (1964-5), Kelly’s first published print series.
