Abhishek Dixit
The second eldest of three male siblings, Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York in 1923. During his childhood, he was raised in the northern part of New Jersey and tended to spend most of his time in solitude, often observing various winged creatures such as birds and insects. His distinct approach to art was influenced by his later observations of nature. Following his high school graduation, he pursued technical art and design education at the Pratt Institute during the period of 1941-1942. During Kelly’s time in the military, he was deployed to France, England and Germany, with a short visit to Paris. Kelly’s aesthetic and future career trajectory were significantly influenced by his exposure to camouflage, shadows, and his brief tenure in Paris.
Ellsworth Kelly. Courtesy: Wikipedia.
Following his release from military service in 1945, Kelly pursued artistic education at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School for a period of 24 months. During this time, his artistic creations predominantly encompassed classical, figurative interpretations. In the year 1948, aided by assistance from the G.I. cohort, (a significant group of veterans), efforts were made to achieve a particular goal. After leaving Paris, Bill came back and stayed there for six years. Kelly’s artistic style evolved independently from the prevailing influence of Abstract Expressionism in the United States due to his geographical separation. Upon joining École des Beaux-Arts, he stated that his focus was not on abstraction, “My fascination lay in both the Renaissance era and Picasso’s work. I was drawn to Romanesque and Byzantine art styles, as well as the Surrealist approach of automatic drawing and the idea of art created through chance.”
Kelly has expressed that he assimilated the techniques of various art movements and creators, and by doing so, he identified the elements that he did not want to include in his paintings. Thus, he excluded features such as marks, lines, and the painted edge. Furthermore, during a trip to the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, he showed greater interest in the museum’s windows as opposed to the art exhibitions. Taking inspiration from this observation, he devised his own rendition of these windows. He has stated that from that moment on, painting ceased to exist in the way he once knew it. Kelly’s artistic perspective was greatly influenced by his tendency to perceive things as potential objects of art, demanding precise replication without any embellishment. This approach guided him in translating the tangible world into abstract forms, colours, and structures in his artistic creations.
Nine Squares, 1976–7. Courtesy: Tate.
Upon Kelly’s arrival to the United States in 1954 from Paris, he joined a group of emerging American painters who sought to diverge from the New York School’s focus on introspective, ego-driven psychological expression that characterized Abstract Expressionism. Instead, these artists embraced a fresh approach involving extensive colour fields, empirical nature observation, and references to ordinary existence. Kelly gained a growing amount of influence within his close circle, which consisted of artists such as Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, and James Rosenquist, during the early 1960s and 1970s. He also presented a model of conceptualized, reduced visual representation to progressing Minimalist sculptors like Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Richard Serra. Donald Sultan’s simplistic and conceptual depictions of mundane objects such as fruits and flora can be traced back to the influence of Kelly’s artwork, which also inspired the graphic design industry during the post-World War II era.
Méditerranée, 1952. Courtesy: Tate.
Ellsworth Kelly’s revolutionary ideas from the late 1940s and early 1950s transformed and influenced the direction of abstract art for many years to come. His contributions to the world of art, such as the creation of one-colour and multi-panel paintings, his commitment to holistic structures, and his incorporation of randomness and repetition, played a significant role in the departure of painting from expressionism during the 1960s. His method of abstraction was exceptional and differed from the norm as it was based on specific details instead of generalizations.
Along with crafting totemic sculptures, Kelly initiated the production of artwork commissioned by the public, such as a sculpture offered to Barcelona in 1978 and an installation designed for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Back in 1993. Kelly was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama in 2013.
Throughout a span of 70 years, Kelly transformed these discovered creations into art forms such as paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs, which surpassed any specific artistic style in terms of their visual impact. His artistic vision remained consistent, making it easy to identify every piece as his own, even when he tried out different materials and styles. As the artist approached the end of his life, his health declined and he was hindered by the use of an oxygen tank. He attributed his need for it to the effects of “the turpentine,” which impeded his ability to work on large-scale paintings. Despite these challenges, Kelly persisted in creating art and pushing boundaries until his passing.
