Abstract Expressionism

American painter, sculptor, and printinaker, born in 1923 in Newburgh, New York.
Much like Henri Matisse, Ellsworth Kelly is a painter whose three-dimensional work has come to be recognized as vital to the evolution of twentieth-century sculpture. After initial studies at Pratt Institute in New York and the Boston Museum School, as well as a period of service during World War II, Kelly arrived in Paris in 1948, one of the last American artists of the postwar generation to seek inspiration and instruction in what was still the acknowledged capital of the art world. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts briefly, but it was an encounter with Dada artist Jean Arp in 1950 that was to have the strongest impact on the young American. He switched from figurative to abstract art and in the mid 1950s he became recognized as one of the leading exponents of the *Hard-Edge style that was one of the successors to *Abstract Expressionism. His paintings are characteristically very clear and simple in construction, sometimes consisting of a number of individual panels placed together, identical in size but each painted a different uniform colour (he started using this formula in 1952). Following Arp's example, Kelly began to probe the laws of chance and random selection in his own work. Kelly used this method sparingly, allowing a chance selection of color and pattern to animate paintings that had been constructed in predetermined grid structures. He was also one of the first artists to develop the idea of the "shaped" canvas.

Upon his return to the United States in 1954, Kelly moved to New York, where he became one of the chief proponents of hard-edge abstraction. Although Kelly had made sculptural reliefs as early as 1950, his first freestanding compositions were created at the end of that decade. As he became celebrated for his large-scale monochrome canvases, Kelly continued to pursue sculptural projects over the following years.
His work has been widely exhibited and he has had numerous public commissions, including a mural for Unesco in Paris (1969).

Kelly's Houston Triptych was formally commissioned for the Cullen Sculpture Garden in 1986, following a two-year discussion with the artist on the project. Kelly chose the west wall on which his work is mounted, and he conceived the triptych as a complement to the four Matisse Backs, which are installed around the corner. Each element of Houston Triptych, one of Kelly's first works in sheet bronze, is mounted 12 inches from the wall. The three images, variations on the arc and the triangle, appear to float unanchored, casting ever-changing shadows across the mural surface. Their placement on the wall suggests a random spinning of form; the monumental bronzes seem to have been scattered across the surface in much the same fashion that Arp employed in his Dada compositions. But the appearance of random play is actually the result of careful measurement and an acute sense of the site. It is the thoughtful interaction between the sculpture and the surrounding walls, plants, sculptures, and walkways that makes the Houston Triptych a unique presence in the garden. Kelly has also made prints in various techniques and has worked as a sculptor (using painted cut-out metal forms-often industrially manufactured related to those in his paintings). ...

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