Ellsworth Kelly, short biography notes on his abstract art and life; American artist, famous for his colored shaped forms

During World War II, Kelly served in a deception unit known as The Ghost Army; he had a lot of exposure to military camouflage during the time he served. His exposure to the visual art of camouflage can be seen as part of his basic training. Kelly served until the end of the European phase of the war. Upon his discharge at the end of World War II, Kelly studied from 1946 to 1947 at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris; there he immersed himself in the rich artistic resources of France. It was in Paris that Kelly established his aesthetic attitude, partly influenced by his many visits to Hans Arp and his wife Sophie Arp Tauber. Kelly decided to return to America in 1954 after being abroad for six years.

Ellsworth Kelly, extended biography facts of the American artist famous for his colored shaped forms

Kelly was born May 31, 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 1947.

Kelly studied art in Paris from 1948 to 1954, when post-war Paris was the home of European Abstraction and the avant-garde. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the G.I. Bill, although he attended classes infrequently. In France, he discovered Romanesque art and architecture and Byzantine art. He was also introduced to Surrealism [more] and Neo-Plasticism, which led him to experiment with automatic drawing and geometric abstraction.

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 can be recombined to produce alternate compositions, as well as multi-panel paintings in which each canvas is painted a single color. During the 1950s, he traveled throughout France, where he socialized with Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Alberto Magnelli, Francis Picabia, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miro and Georges Vantongerloo , among other artists. His first solo show took place at the Galerie Arnaud, Paris, in 1951.

After six formative years in Paris, Kelly returned to the United States in 1954, living first in a studio apartment on Broad Street, and then at Coenties Slip in lower Manhattan, where his neighbors included Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, Fred Mitchell, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. At this time he “used his canvases to explore the concept of spectral color and expressed his fascination with the resonance of color.”

His first solo show in New York was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, and three years later he was included in Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1958, he also began to make freestanding sculptures. He moved out of Manhattan in 1970, set up a studio in Chatham, and a home in nearby Spencertown, New York.

Kelly’s first retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1973. The following year, Kelly began an ongoing series of totemic sculptures in steel and aluminum. He traveled throughout Spain, Italy, and France in 1977, when his work was included in Documenta in Kassel. He has executed many public commissions, including a mural for UNESCO in Paris in 1969, sculpture for the city of Barcelona in 1978, and a memorial for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., in 1993. Kelly’s extensive work has been recognized in numerous retrospective exhibitions, including a sculpture exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1982; an exhibition of works on paper and a show of his print works that traveled extensively in the United States and Canada from 1987-88; and a career retrospective in 1996 organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Haus der Kunst, Munich. Kelly lives in Spencertown, New York.

From his earliest work Kelly’s style was consistently cool and hard-edged in orientation. Living in Paris, he was influenced by the geometric abstraction of such European artists as Piet Mondrian. This is especially apparent in his paintings of the early 1950s, many of which are based on strict geometric modules. Unlike Mondrian, however, Kelly frequently composed his paintings in separate panels that could be joined to form a large, single image. Many of these works are as much murals as easel paintings, and they demonstrate how Kelly’s art is amply suited to the demands of architectural settings.
Some of Kelly’s finest individual paintings were executed during the 1960s. Blue-White (1962) consists of two large blue masses that barely converge within a white field; the clean simplicity of Kelly’s drawing allows these forms to expand enormously, resulting in a work of truly monumental scale.

Well into the 1990s, Kelly continued to gain in popularity and recognition. A quiet man who was seldom seen at functions of the art world, he once said, “I’m not interested in edges. I’m interested in mass and color.”
In 1991, Kelly was again part of an exhibition at the Whitney, and the following year he was shown again at the Guggenheim as part of the Art of This Century exhibit. In the fall of 1996, Kelly’s works were presented in a major retrospective at the Guggenheim. On July 4, 2000, Kelly received the Praemium Imperiale award for painting from The Japan Art Association.

Ellsworth Kelly; art links for more information and biography facts on the artist’s life and painting art

* about the American Hard Edge artist Ellsworth Kelly, on Wikipedia