Ellsworth Kelly
Took shapes from shadows, windows and bridges, and painted them flat with nothing else in the picture.
Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York in 1923 and served in the Ghost Army, the deception unit that used inflatable tanks and painted canvas to mislead the Germans — an education in how form reads at a distance. He studied in Paris on the GI Bill and stayed six years, during which he stopped inventing shapes and began taking them from observation: the shadow of a stair rail, the space between two windows, the curve of a bridge. What he brought back to New York in 1954 were single flat colours and single shapes, sometimes on shaped or multi-panel supports. He died in 2015.
Kelly's paintings depend on absolute evenness of colour and on the exact profile of a shaped canvas, so any retouching, edge wear or panel misalignment is conspicuous and materially reduces value; multi-panel works must retain their correct spacing and hanging instructions. The prints are a major body of work in themselves, particularly the lithographs made with Maeght in Paris and the long collaboration with Gemini G.E.L., in editions of thirty to a hundred and fifty. The plant drawings in pencil on paper are unique, numerous and much sought.
If you own a work by Ellsworth Kelly
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.