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Lot Essay
Working in an age when vigorous, frenetic Abstract Expressionism was king, Ellsworth Kelly was the triumphant herald of the Hard-Edge movement. Diverging from the energetic chaos and emotional brushwork of his colleagues, Kelly’s adept manipulation of color and form gave birth to a style at the crux of nascent Minimalism and the freedom of abstraction which infused geometric shapes with a post-war sensitivity for time and history. Blue Black Red is a testament to the artist’s mastery of his materials and his ability to fully absorb the viewer into the canvas with little more than three colors in a seemingly straightforward arrangement. Freeing his compositions from the pull of gravity and the traditional orientation of painting, Kelly provides visual buoyancy that beckons to the eye. Gottfried Boehm writes, “The decisive point in Kelly’s development was reached when he abandoned the traditional dynamic of painting’s organization, when form emancipated itself from its customary support, the ground, so that it could from then on lead an independent existence in the visual world” (“In-Between Spaces: Painting, Relief, and Sculpture in the Work of Ellsworth Kelly,” in Ellsworth Kelly: Works 1956-2002, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2002-2003, p. 33). Flying in the face of tradition by doing away with any connection to representational composition or emotional output, Kelly sought to more fully combat the passive viewer. His sculptures and canvases call for a fully absorptive experience with the immediacy of a bolt of electricity.
Stretching fifteen feet in length, Blue Black Red is proof of Kelly’s innate ability to create monumental statements out of minimal arrangements of form and color. Oriented horizontally, the rectangular canvas is split into three discrete sections. Corresponding to the colors in the title, the vast areas of unadulterated blue, black, and red march in sequence from left to right. The central element is a slightly irregular circle painted in deep, rich black that serves as an unwavering visual anchor for the rest of the composition. Its edges bloom into its neighbors and smartly collide with the top and bottom of the frame. On either side, the fields of red and blue spread from the very outskirts of the canvas inward to the crisp exterior of this inky void. Kelly’s works are notable for their effortless mix of precision and the unarguable presence of the artist’s hand. Balance is achieved not by mathematical perfection but by a fortuitous arrangement of interrelated elements. Of this exacting application Kelly has said, “a quarter of an inch, a half inch off the angle can make a big difference... My eye is like a gyroscope, it can find the right balance” (quoted in R. Storr, “Interview with Ellsworth Kelly,” in MoMA, vol. 2, no. 5, June 1999, p. 7). There are no mechanical permutations here, just a dextrous attention to detail and a need for color and shape to be the sole focus, not a painterly brushstroke and certainly not a reference to subject. The asymmetry and fluid line imparts a palpable humanity into an otherwise tack-sharp and exacting composition.
After serving in the Second World War, Kelly studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School before returning to Europe on the G.I. Bill and taking up residence in Paris from 1948 until the mid-1950s. During this time, he transitioned from figurative work into more pure abstraction. This evolution took place as he came into contact with European Surrealism and the ideas of chance espoused by John Cage and Merce Cunningham, both of whom he met during his sojourn on the continent. Furthermore, Kelly was inspired by the works of architecture he came across in Post-War Paris, and he often used his real world observations of shadows and shapes as the impetus for his work. The artist noted, “The found forms in a cathedral vault or in a panel of asphalt on a roadway seemed more valuable and instructive, an experience more sensual than geometrical painting” (online via www.stedelijk.nl [Accessed March 12, 2025]). In 1954, Kelly moved to New York in an effort to connect to the vibrant scene happening there. Though he distanced himself from Abstract Expressionism proper, his interest in the properties of color guaranteed his position as one of the progenitors of Hard-Edge and colorfield painting. Furthermore, his insistence on examining the nuances of shape serve as a logical art historical connection between geometric abstraction and the cool formality of Minimalism. Never one to adhere to a prescribed trend, Kelly’s work followed a distinctly individual path throughout his life.
Though his work is often seen through the lens of midcentury thought and the clean, crisp lines of a new age, Kelly himself was deeply mired in the annals of history. Besides his initial reactions to Parisian architecture, his work was a direct commentary on what he saw painting becoming. He called for a return to more immediate experiences of the artform in a 1950 letter to John Cage when he decried, “I am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long—to hang on walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures… We must make our art like the Egyptians… It should meet the eye—direct” (quoted in Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996, p. 11). For his career-spanning experiment, the artist pushed the limits of color and shape while foregrounding the inimitable qualities of pigment itself. Much like the Impressionists decades before him sought to capture light directly from the world and place it on canvas, Kelly’s startlingly consistent motivator was to divorce color from any sort of representation in order to more fully understand its building blocks and the forces that laid therein. By laying bare this most basic notion of Western painting, works like Blue Black Red serve as striking treatises on the ability of the artist to create pictorial tension with even the most base elements.
Stretching fifteen feet in length, Blue Black Red is proof of Kelly’s innate ability to create monumental statements out of minimal arrangements of form and color. Oriented horizontally, the rectangular canvas is split into three discrete sections. Corresponding to the colors in the title, the vast areas of unadulterated blue, black, and red march in sequence from left to right. The central element is a slightly irregular circle painted in deep, rich black that serves as an unwavering visual anchor for the rest of the composition. Its edges bloom into its neighbors and smartly collide with the top and bottom of the frame. On either side, the fields of red and blue spread from the very outskirts of the canvas inward to the crisp exterior of this inky void. Kelly’s works are notable for their effortless mix of precision and the unarguable presence of the artist’s hand. Balance is achieved not by mathematical perfection but by a fortuitous arrangement of interrelated elements. Of this exacting application Kelly has said, “a quarter of an inch, a half inch off the angle can make a big difference... My eye is like a gyroscope, it can find the right balance” (quoted in R. Storr, “Interview with Ellsworth Kelly,” in MoMA, vol. 2, no. 5, June 1999, p. 7). There are no mechanical permutations here, just a dextrous attention to detail and a need for color and shape to be the sole focus, not a painterly brushstroke and certainly not a reference to subject. The asymmetry and fluid line imparts a palpable humanity into an otherwise tack-sharp and exacting composition.
After serving in the Second World War, Kelly studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School before returning to Europe on the G.I. Bill and taking up residence in Paris from 1948 until the mid-1950s. During this time, he transitioned from figurative work into more pure abstraction. This evolution took place as he came into contact with European Surrealism and the ideas of chance espoused by John Cage and Merce Cunningham, both of whom he met during his sojourn on the continent. Furthermore, Kelly was inspired by the works of architecture he came across in Post-War Paris, and he often used his real world observations of shadows and shapes as the impetus for his work. The artist noted, “The found forms in a cathedral vault or in a panel of asphalt on a roadway seemed more valuable and instructive, an experience more sensual than geometrical painting” (online via www.stedelijk.nl [Accessed March 12, 2025]). In 1954, Kelly moved to New York in an effort to connect to the vibrant scene happening there. Though he distanced himself from Abstract Expressionism proper, his interest in the properties of color guaranteed his position as one of the progenitors of Hard-Edge and colorfield painting. Furthermore, his insistence on examining the nuances of shape serve as a logical art historical connection between geometric abstraction and the cool formality of Minimalism. Never one to adhere to a prescribed trend, Kelly’s work followed a distinctly individual path throughout his life.
Though his work is often seen through the lens of midcentury thought and the clean, crisp lines of a new age, Kelly himself was deeply mired in the annals of history. Besides his initial reactions to Parisian architecture, his work was a direct commentary on what he saw painting becoming. He called for a return to more immediate experiences of the artform in a 1950 letter to John Cage when he decried, “I am not interested in painting as it has been accepted for so long—to hang on walls of houses as pictures. To hell with pictures… We must make our art like the Egyptians… It should meet the eye—direct” (quoted in Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996, p. 11). For his career-spanning experiment, the artist pushed the limits of color and shape while foregrounding the inimitable qualities of pigment itself. Much like the Impressionists decades before him sought to capture light directly from the world and place it on canvas, Kelly’s startlingly consistent motivator was to divorce color from any sort of representation in order to more fully understand its building blocks and the forces that laid therein. By laying bare this most basic notion of Western painting, works like Blue Black Red serve as striking treatises on the ability of the artist to create pictorial tension with even the most base elements.