Hard Edge is a particular movement from the mid-20th century, a time when abstract art was flourishing and constantly giving birth to new trends. Ellsworth Kelly was one of the most important figures in this genre. He would have been 100 years old today. The Art.Salon commemorates this geometry juggler.
A master of Color Field painting and Hard Edge: Ellsworth Kelly was a master of geometric form par excellence. A contemporary of Alexander Calder, Jean Arp, and Robert Indiana, he helped create a new genre in the still young field of abstract art. His milestones: Cité (1951, San Francisco Museum of Art), Colors for a Large Wall (1951, MoMA), or Blue Green Red (1963, Met Museum) – the shapes and colors have a haunting effect because of their format. Today, many young people probably look at his paintings as a matter of course, without knowing their origins - they seem familiar. Their creator, Ellsworth Kelly, would have turned 100 today.
Kelly was born in 1923 in Newburgh, New York. During World War II, he studied at the Pratt Institute in New York City until he served as a soldier in the Battle of Brittany in 1943. After the war, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. While in France, he also taught at the American School and met influential contemporaries. Back in the U.S. in 1954, Kelly's career took off; he moved into a studio in the neighborhood of Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, and James Rosenquist, held his first solo exhibitions, and even participated in documenta III in 1964.
In the decades that followed, he received awards such as the Painting Prize of the Art Institute of Chicago (1974) and became a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1974). Even in his old age, he curated exhibitions of Henri Matisse's drawings (2014, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Massachusetts) and of his works in dialogue with those of Monet (2015, Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts). In 2015, at the age of 92, Kelly died in Spencertown, New York.
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