Label TextKelly’s paintings with bright shapes crisply defined against a color-plane background, as seen in the Art Center’s Yellow Blue (1963), made the artist a leader among the Hard Edge painters, a group who combined geometric abstraction with the focus on relationships between colors. The artist found inspiration for his work in his observations of the world, such as the shadow of a windowsill or the gently swelling contour of a flower’s stem or the slight curve of the earth’s horizon that appears when the sun is rising. Kelly abstracted these images, which he refers to as “flashes,” into colored forms. "I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract,” explained Kelly. (1)
His sculptures share noteworthy features with his paintings, including the artist’s focus on shape and rejection of three-dimensionality. From one angle, Untitled is a 20 foot high obelisk with gently sloping vertical edges; from another, it is a two-inch thick strip of metal that seems to disappear into the landscape. While sculpture is inherently a three-dimensional medium, Kelly’s sculptures are meant to be experienced frontally like a painting. The swooping curved sides give the shape a sense of verticality and lightness, though the sculpture weighs nearly 3,000 pounds. Cast in reflective aluminum, the piece sits lightly upon the landscape, as if hovering or being held in place by an unseen energy. Said Kelly, "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."(2)
Published References"John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park", Lea Rosson DeLong, ed., Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, 1923, pp. 88-91, detailo p.9
His sculptures share noteworthy features with his paintings, including the artist’s focus on shape and rejection of three-dimensionality. From one angle, Untitled is a 20 foot high obelisk with gently sloping vertical edges; from another, it is a two-inch thick strip of metal that seems to disappear into the landscape. While sculpture is inherently a three-dimensional medium, Kelly’s sculptures are meant to be experienced frontally like a painting. The swooping curved sides give the shape a sense of verticality and lightness, though the sculpture weighs nearly 3,000 pounds. Cast in reflective aluminum, the piece sits lightly upon the landscape, as if hovering or being held in place by an unseen energy. Said Kelly, "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."(2)
(1) Quoted in Ellsworth Kelly, exh. cat. (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1996), 40. )
(2) Ellsworth Kelly, Fragmentation and the Single Form, exh. brochure (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1990), n.p.
Published References"John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park", Lea Rosson DeLong, ed., Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, 1923, pp. 88-91, detailo p.9
DimensionsOverall: 240 × 22 × 2 in., 3000 lb. (609.6 × 55.9 × 5.1 cm, 1360.8 kg.)
Accession Number 2015.15
Classificationssculpture
InscriptionsE. KELLY 847
ProvenanceArtist. Donald Bryant [by 2009]; (Matthew Marks Gallery); John and Mary Pappajohn [purchased from previous, 2009]; Des Moines Art Center [gift from previous, 2015]
Images (1)
Audio (2)
