Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kellywas an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing simplicity of form, similar to the work of John McLaughlin and Kenneth Noland. Kelly often employed bright colors. He lived and worked in Spencertown, New York...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth31 May 1923
CountryUnited States of America
bird color fascinated learned
I learned my color in Europe. I've always been a colorist, I think. I started when I was very young, being a bird-watcher, fascinated by the bird colors.
color drawing done
All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation.
strong color two
Shape and color are my two strong things. And by doing this, drawing plants has always led me into my paintings and my sculptures.
blue color ideas
The form of my painting is the content. My work is made of single or multiple panels: rectangle, curved, or square. I am less interested in marks on the panels than the 'presence' of the panels themselves. In Red Yellow Blue III the square panels present color. It was made to exist forever in the present; it is an idea and can be repeated anytime in the future.
black-and-white color want
I'm not interested in edges. I'm interested in the mass and color, the black and white. The edges happen because the forms get as quiet as they can be. I want the masses to perform. When I work with forms and colors, I get the edge...
color space curves
I have worked to free shape from its ground, and then to work the shape so that it has a definite relationship to the space around it; so that it has a clarity and a measure within itself of its parts (angles, curves, edges and mass); and so that, with color and tonality, the shape finds its own space and always demands its freedom and separateness.
certain decided edge literal sculpture similar
I started doing sculpture in 1959. I had no commissions then. They were painted, similar in style to the paintings... At a certain point, I decided I didn't want an edge between two colors, I wanted color differences in literal space.
god invent
I sometimes don't try to invent something. I wait for some kind of a direction - and it happens. I get an angle, for instance, and it just appears, and I say, 'Oh my God - that's it!'
time work
Time has always been very important in my work.
earliest great owned painters people seals supposed
My earliest drawing is a supposed Carracci. It wasn't very expensive, I guess, because they don't know if it's a real Carracci. But it has all these seals on it of people who've owned it, and one of the great portrait painters of England, Reynolds, had owned it, so that's the earliest.
inner sort
I have a sort of inner sense for scale.
coat density gets surface
I don't like acrylic because you can't get the density of color. And with each coat of oil paint, the surface gets better and richer.
draw drawing enjoy grew school taught
I was taught to draw very well when I was in school at Boston. And I grew to enjoy drawing so much that I never stopped.
almost antique coming liked separate
In Paris in the late '40s, I started making my first reliefs. They are separate panels. I wanted to do something coming out of the wall, almost like a collage. I did a lot of white reliefs when I started because I liked antique reliefs, really old stuff.