Ellsworth Kelly, Color Panels for a Large Wall II (1978), via Matthew Marks

In 1978, Ellsworth Kelly was commissioned to create a painting for the lobby of a new building in Cincinnati. His piece, Color Panels for a Large Wall, was the resulting work, a 30-by-125-foot painting that clocked in as his largest ever made. Yet the artist’s work in this vein would live well beyond this specific installation, reprised in several iterations of shows and installs in Amsterdam, New York, and Munich. In 2003, Kelly reconfigured the painting’s eighteen panels — from two rows of nine to three rows of six — when it was installed in its permanent home at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. (more…)

Installation view of Ellsworth Kelly: Black & White Works at The FLAG Art Foundation, 2018. Photography by Steven Probert.

Organized by Ellsworth Kelly’s long-time life partner photographer Jack Shear, Black and White Works at the FLAG Art Foundation sheds light on the pioneer colorist’s paintings using primarily black and white, a body of work occupying one fifth of his entire repertoire. Coinciding with the Blanton Art Museum’s unveiling of Kelly’s monumental 2,715 square-foot architectural work Austin, which also introduced a new path in the late artist’s expansive career, the exhibition proposes a fresh approach Kelly’s legacy. Containing sculptural experimentation and geometric curiosity, the works on view demonstrate his unending interest in pushing the boundaries of abstract precision, architectural balance, and optic illusion within the limits of two seemingly opposite and mute colors. Contrasted with the artist’s signature exuberance and his equally precise monochromatic color palette, the works Shear brought together both evoke characteristics from Kelly’s most iconic while and challenging the viewer to expand their interpretation and appreciation of his larger oeuvre. (more…)

Matthew Wong, Last Summer in Santa Monica (2017), via Sarah Cohen for Art Observed

Drawing on a continuous engagement with the poetics of the horizon and its recurring presence across the history of contemporary painting, Cheim & Read has opened its summer group exhibition, The Horizontal.  Culling together a diverse group of artists from the past eighty years of artistic practice, the show is an investigation and reflection on the horizon as a motif weaving its way throughout varied investigations of modern art-making.  Photography, painting, drawing and print-making each make their presence felt throughout the exhibition, inviting a deep perspective on how the skyline, and its attendant impact on the viewer’s perception, has continued to inspire artist’s work into the modern day.

Louise Fishman, Bitter Herb (1988), via Sarah Cohen for Art Observed

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Ellsworth Kelly, Diptych: Green Blue (2015), via Art Observed

Since the passing of Ellsworth Kelly in December of 2015, the exhibition of the artists’s final works has made for a sort of bittersweet anticipation. The show could be seen as a grand farewell to an artist who changed the landscape of American painting several times over during the course of his career, each time delving deeper into his clean, almost rhythmic approach to the shaped canvas that filled its confines with rich bounties of color.  Presented this month at Matthew Marks, the artist’s last body of work does not disappoint, and the series of pieces, culled from past sketches and concepts or completely new ideas, feels like a fitting look at the furthest points of the artist’s exploration before he laid down his brush for the last time.  (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Barn, Long Island (1968), via Matthew Marks Gallery

The late Ellsworth Kelly’s photographic works are the subject of the artist’s first posthumous gallery exhibition in New York this month, offering a unique and alternative perspective on an artist already seen as one of the most influential and prominent abstractionists of the 20th Century.  The show, on view at Matthew Marks in Chelsea, showcases over thirty gelatin silver prints, originally taken between 1950 and 1982, the first ever devoted to Kelly’s photographic endeavors.  Kelly finished preparing these prints and planning the exhibition shortly before his death on December 27th, at the age of ninety-two.  Here, these photographs offer a fitting perspective of the artist’s own aesthetic inclinations, and his unique perspective for the world around him. (more…)

The Ellsworth Kelley Foundation has given a gift of $250,000 to the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies, part of a fund that will help maintain and preserve 2,300 works located in 140 countries.  “We are profoundly saddened by his loss, but we are honored and grateful for this extraordinary gift, which guarantees that FAPE’s entire collection will be cared for in perpetuity at no cost to the government,” said FAPE chair Jo Carole Lauder. (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Curves on White (Four Panels) (2012), via Art Observed

Ellsworth Kelly, a pioneer of 20th Century abstraction and an early voice in the development of color field painting and cut-canvas work, has passed away at the age of 92.

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Ellsworth Kelly is interviewed in The Guardian this week, as the artist reflects on his long career and his desire to continue working, even at age 92.  “I give what I’ve got. It’s harder. I can’t work on really big pictures any more, so the ideas are blocked a bit,” he says. “But then, the visions were always too much.  I feel like the world is over there, and it keeps coming at me, and I want to do it, respond to it.” (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly is the subject of lengthy profile in The Guardian this week, as the artist releases the first volume of his catalog raisonné, and reflects on his lengthy career.  Of particular note are his early experiences at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston’s Art School, which he found somewhat stifling towards modern and contemporary work.  “One day in ’46 or ’47, I went down to see a secretary about something, down in the basement of the museum,” he recalls.  “There was a painting behind her. I said, ‘Is that a Braque?’ And she said yes. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Why isn’t it upstairs?’ She said, ‘Well, they didn’t like it.’” (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly has released the first volume of his catalog raisonné, tracing his evolution towards the cut canvas abstraction that he built his career on.  “I was on the way, but it was too soon. I wasn’t able to just throw out everything,” he says of his early experiments. (more…)

After years of financial troubles, the Corcoran Gallery of Art has been seeking legal permission to dissolve and merge with the National Gallery of Art only to meet with pushback from opponents of the plan, including employees and students of the museum’s art college. In a testimony on Wednesday, the opposition cited “broken fund-raising” as the cause of the museum’s downward spiral and argued that the proposed integration goes against the Corcoran’s deed, drafted in 1869. If the plan goes forward, the National Gallery of Art will take over the Corcoran’s collection, which includes work by Cy Twombly, Ellsworth Kelly, and Andy Warhol, while George Washington University will manage the art college.   (more…)

Katharina Fritsch, St. Michael (2008), via Matthew Marks

Simple yet explanatory, Sculpture is Matthew Marks Gallery’s current exhibition, bringing together the most recent three dimensional works by artists Katharina Fritsch, Robert Gober, Jasper Johns, Charles Ray, Ellsworth Kelly and Martin Puryear. Adopting the newest in the medium as its main concept, this group exhibition presents an opportunity for gallery goers to view and compare current modalities in the art of sculpture. (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly,  Chatham I White Black (1971), Courtesy of MoMA

Coming off the wide success of his early experiments in shaped canvases, pure color fields and architectural investigations in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, artist Ellsworth Kelly withdrew from the New York City art world that had helped him attain such a high degree of success, settling in the upstate villa of Spencertown.  It was here, painting at a rented studio in nearby Chatham, that the artist would begin a new series of works that would help develop and refine his artistic practice to a fine point.

Ellsworth Kelly,  Chatham XII Yellow Black (1971), Courtesy of MoMA (more…)

President Barack Obama’s administration has announced the winners of the 2012 National Medal of Arts, including Ellsworth Kelly on the list of recipients.  Kelly, who turned 90 this year, is currently in the spotlight for a trio of New York shows this spring and summer, spanning the range of his career, and will accept the award tonight in Washington, DC.  Other recipients include landscape architect Laurie Olin. (more…)

Ellsworth Kelly, Singular Forms (Installation View), courtesy of Mnuchin Gallery

From Sculpture on the Wall at the Barnes Foundation to the Museum of Modern Art’s Chatham Series, the work of artist Ellsworth Kelly is being celebrated across the East Coast this spring. Until June 1, the Mnuchin Gallery in New York will join in on the event, hosting Kelly’s ongoing Singular Forms series, which has spanned most of hist career, from 1966-2009.  A retrospective of Kelly’s emblematic abstract paintings, the show is curated by the artist himself, presenting his personal take on this broad body of work.

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In anticipation of his new shows at Matthew Marks, Mnuchin Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art, artist Ellsworth Kelly is profiled in the Wall Street Journal, covering his work, his life, and his creative process at 90 years old.  “I think one of the things that is great about being 90, he only feels his body. His sense of wonder, wanting to create more are still there.” Says his partner, Jack Shear. (more…)

ICI Executive Director Kate Fowle, Leo Award recipient Dasha Zhukova, and Independent Vision Curatorial Award recipients Nav Haq and Jay Sanders

All photos by C. Daleli for ArtObserved

On Monday, November 19th, 2012, Independent Curators International held its Annual Fall Benefit & Auction. ICI’s Executive Director, Kate Fowle, kicked off the party with a toast to all Honorees, Board of Trustees and supporters of the institution. The intimate Honoree Hour celebrated the recipient of this year’s Leo Award, Dasha Zhukova. Agnes Gund, President Emerita of the Museum of Modern Art and member of the Board of Trustees of the National Council on the Arts presented the award to Zhukova after listing her endless accomplishments are an art world patron. This was followed by acclaimed curator Hans Ulrich Obrist presenting the prestigious Independent Vision Curatorial Award to Jay Sanders and Nav Haq.

Wendi Murdoch (more…)

Grand Palais, courtesy FIAC

FIAC, or the 39th International Contemporary Art Fair, will open tomorrow (Thursday) in Paris, with a VIP preview today, with 184 galleries exhibiting at the Grand Palais, and this year utilizing the restored Salon d’Honneur as well, which lies at the center of the structure. As in past years, galleries will exhibit sculpture at the Tuilieries Garden nearby. Approximately 65,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Tuilieries Garden courtesy FIAC (more…)

All photos taken on site by Aniko Berman

On Monday, September 24, Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl, the New York gallery for the famed Los Angeles print workshop, hosted its Artists for Obama event celebrating the Artists for Obama 2012 limited edition portfolio created and sold to support Obama’s reelection efforts. For the campaign, 19 artists have come together to create a portfolio of limited edition prints, with all proceeds going to the Obama Victory Fund. Of the 150 examples, 60 have already sold at $28,000 each; at the end of the project, Gemini G.E.L. hopes to raise 4.2 million dollars for the campaign. An additional sweepstakes offers supporters a chance to win the full portfolio for a $250 contribution to the fund.

Image: Artist James Rosenquist

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Ellsworth Kelly, interviewed, describes his taste in art, his creative process and how he chooses to work against the art market rather than give into its pressures. His show, Plant Drawings, will be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until September 3rd.

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Ellsworth Kelly’s Dartmouth Panels, a large external wall piece, commissioned by Leon Black, the recent buyer of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’, has been installed on Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts, preceding the opening of the Black Visual Arts Center in September.

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Marian Goodman Gallery, “Ellsworth Kelly,” installation view. All photography courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery unless otherwise noted.

Ellsworth Kelly‘s installation of four 2-panel paintings executed this year is on view at Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris until July 13, 2012. The show, as the gallery’s press release relates, is his first in Paris in 20 years, when his formative paintings made in his youthful residence in the city were exhibited at the Galeries Nationales du Jeu de Paume. This new work comprises four paintings, each consisting of a curved geometrical relief on a white panel, progressing on the ordered spectrum from red, yellow, blue, to green. Laconically hung a single panel to each of the four walls in the gallery, the paintings seem a further distillation of Kelly’s painterly system, a continuation of the experiments he first executed in Paris in his early years.

Marian Goodman Gallery, “Ellsworth Kelly,” installation view

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‪‬Philanthropist Jo Carole Lauder has headed the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE) since 1996, placing artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Louise Bourgeois in American embassies across more than 140 countries, “the art in our embassies program waves a less obvious cultural flag for America,” says the foundation’s president Eden Rafshoon

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‪‬Financier and Dartmouth alum Leon Black donates $48 million to Dartmouth College to build new visual arts center featuring a commission by Ellsworth Kelly, “We hope this building fosters creativity among Dartmouth’s students and faculty — that it inspires them to dream big, be courageous, take artistic risks — and infuses them with the life-changing power of the visual arts,” [AO Newslink]

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