Book Description

The paintings of Ellsworth Kelly (born 1923) are famous for their hard edges, minimalist abstraction and above all, their bright, vibrant colors. Less known are the black-and-white drawings, collages and paintings that preceded or accompanied many of them, despite the fact that they make up roughly 20 percent of his total output. Ellsworth Kelly: Black & White and the exhibition it accompanies bring together the artist's color-free work for the first time, and offer a fresh take on his long career, emphasizing his use of shape, contrast, texture and his incorporation of such everyday objects as a broken windowpane, a handrail shadow or the leaf of a plant into his abstraction. This catalogue makes clear that the scale of contrast between black and white was key to Kelly's artistic self-discovery and subsequent development, and is crucial to any proper understanding of his oeuvre.