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Indepth Arts News:
"ELLSWORTH KELLY: The Early Drawings 1948-1955"
2000-07-20 until 2000-09-10
Kunstmuseum, Bonn
Bonn, ,
DE Germany
The American artist Ellsworth Kelly
(*1923) is without doubt considered
one of the most important
representatives of international
postwar art. At the height of
Abstract Expressionism, from which
Kelly - with his anonymous images -
always kept his distance, he
developed a vocabulary of forms that
was as clear as it was simple. He bade
farewell to the easel painting and, at
the same time, opened up new
prospects for color painting.
The basis for his artistic production,
which ensured his later reputation,
was laid down during his 7-year stay
in Paris. In 1948 Ellsworth Kelly went
to the French capital and became
acquainted with the art of classical
modernism and many of its
protagonists. Between the two force
fields of an assumedly independent
American art and the work of Claude
Monet, Constantin Brancusi and
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, etc., he
discovered the four essential
principles for his future pictorial
objects: the adoption of forms found
in reality, the principle of the random
distribution of picture elements, the
modular grid and the monochrome.
By recourse to a store of over 200
drawings - mostly belonging to the
artist himself and, in part, publically
on display for the first time - the
almost inestimable significance of
Ellsworth Kellys works on paper
becomes clear. As if casting a glance
into the artists studio, the viewer -
with the help of the manifold pencil
drawings, color collages and studies -
can, within a short historical period of
time, review a decisive revolution in
postwar art.
The exhibition is being organized
together with the Harvard University
Art Museums in Cambridge,
Massachusetts and the Kunstmuseum
in Winterthur. It is respectively
sponsored by the Douglas S. Cramer
Foundation, Agnes Gund and Daniel
Shapiro as well as Emily Rauh Pulitzer.
A bilingual catalogue will be published
with a text by Yves-Alain Bois with
185 color reproductions, which will be
available during the exhibition at the
price of DM 58,-. In addition, the art
book Line Form Color, published by
Richter Verlag (80 color pages + an
attendant booklet with a text by
Harry Cooper in a slipcase), can be
purchased for DM 68,- at the museum
bookshop König.
IMAGE:
Study for Sixty-Four Panels:
Colors for a Large Wall, 1951
Collage
20 x 19,7 cm
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