Ellsworth Kelly - 2024
Cahiers d’Art is pleased to announce a new exhibition of works on paper by the American artist Ellsworth Kelly. The show, which spans over both gallery spaces, features 15 works including a selection of collages, drawings, and postcards ranging from the 1950s to Kelly’s last collaboration with the Cahiers d’Art Revue in 2012.
This exhibition, created in close collaboration with the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, offers an intimate glimpse into Kelly’s exploration of form, colour, and composition on paper. The smaller scale of the works provide a unique opportunity to experience the intimacies of Kelly’s artistic practice. Spanning seven decades, these pieces exemplify Kelly’s consistent dedication to line, shape, and the inherent beauty of natural forms.
The postcards showcase his remarkable talent for distilling complex visual ideas into concise and powerful compositions. Often sent to friends and fellow artists, these pieces reflect Kelly’s playful yet profound engagement with the colours and forms found within the everyday.
Kelly’s collages emphasize his innovative exploration of spatial relationships and colour interactions which offer valuable insight into his creative process and his continuous experimentation with form and abstraction. Kelly drew on the connection between abstraction and nature from which he extrapolated forms and colours. Kelly’s deep passion for the natural world is evinced through his delicate and precise studies. The subtle lines of these drawings reveal his distinct ability to embody the essence of organic forms.
Ellsworth Kelly’s connection with Cahiers d’Art is deeply rooted in his reverence for the publication’s influential role in the art world. La Revue Cahiers d’Art (1926-1960), was renowned for its unique range of work on prehistoric to modern art, providing a platform that resonated with Kelly; who shared that in his early years as an artist he bought two early Cahiers d’Art Revues and more when he later lived in Paris.
This relationship was further solidified with the relaunch of Cahiers d’Art in 2012, when its first publication was dedicated to Kelly, coming full circle to celebrate Kelly’s groundbreaking career. Moreover, the publication of his catalogue raisonné by Cahiers d’Art canonises Kelly as one of the most significant artists of the 21st century. This connection not only highlights Kelly’s contributions to the field but also cements his legacy within the esteemed history of Cahiers d’Art.
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) was born in Newburgh, New York. In 1948 he moved to France, where he came into contact with a wide range of classical and modern art. Kelly’s first one-man exhibition was at the Galerie Arnaud in Paris in 1951. He returned to New York in 1954. The Museum of Modern Art in New York organized his first retrospective in 1973. Subsequent exhibitions have been held at museums around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
