Ellsworth Kelly
A collection of collages, drawings and postcards from the 1950s to Ellsworth Kelly’s last collaboration with the Revue Cahiers d’Art in 2012: this exhibition, designed in close collaboration with the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, invites us to discover Kelly’s research into form, colour and composition on paper.
The small format of the works provides a unique opportunity to capture the intimacy of Kelly’s artistic process. Spanning seven decades, these works illustrate the artist’s love of line, form, and the beauty of nature’s shapes. Kelly’s postcards highlight the artist’s mastery of a strong aesthetic in a concise composition. Often sent to family and artist friends, these works reflect Kelly’s deep attraction to the colors and poetic forms of everyday life.
The collages express Kelly’s innovative exploration of formal and chromatic relationships. More than that, they demonstrate his constant experimentation with form and abstraction. Ellsworth Kelly was inspired by the connection between abstraction and nature to draw shapes and colors. His deep attachment to natural forms is reflected in his plant studies, with their subtle and delicate lines. Through these clean lines, Kelly manages to embody and feel the essence of organic forms.
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) was born in Newburgh, New York. In 1948, he moved to France, where he discovered many classical and modern works of art. In 1951, Kelly’s first solo exhibition was organized by the Galerie Arnaud in Paris. In 1954, Kelly decided to return to New York. In 1973, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized his first retrospective. Subsequent exhibitions took place in major museums, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The connection between Ellsworth Kelly and Cahiers d’Art is a continuation of the artist’s attraction to the famous magazine, collecting issues while he was still a young American student in Paris. The Revue Cahiers d’Art was renowned for covering the different periods of art history, from prehistory to modern art, and this editorial choice had appealed to Kelly because it echoed his artistic approach and his collection of Native American antiquities.
This relationship was sublimated by the rebirth of Cahiers d’Art in 2012, when the first publication of the new edition of the magazine was dedicated to him, thus concretizing the artist’s reunion with his Parisian youth and the history of Cahiers d’Art. By publishing his catalogue raisonné, Cahiers d’Art celebrates Kelly’s importance in the history of modern art.
