Ellsworth Kelly valuation
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.
What a work by Ellsworth Kelly is worth
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Bio
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.
At a glance
- Born
- 31 May 1923, Newburgh
- Died
- 27 December 2015, Spencertown
- Movements
- Minimalism, Abstract art, Hard-Edge Painting
More on Wikipedia.
Chatham, Spencertown and Austin
Kelly left New York in 1970 for Spencertown in the Hudson Valley, where he lived for the rest of his life, and in a rented former theatre in nearby Chatham made the Chatham Series: fourteen paintings, each an inverted L made of two joined canvases in two colours. From 2001 he worked in a large studio at Spencertown remodelled by the architect Richard Gluckman, and he died there in December 2015.
His last work, Austin, a chapel-like building with coloured glass windows designed by him, opened at the Blanton Museum of Art in Texas in 2018. For a painting, the correct spacing, order and hanging of the panels, as set out in the documentation, are part of the work.
Oradell, Coenties Slip and the first shaped canvas
Kelly grew up at Oradell, New Jersey, where his grandmother taught him to watch birds; Audubon remained an influence, and the critic Eugene Goossen traced the two- and three-colour paintings back to the birds. He studied at Pratt from 1941 until he was drafted, and after the war at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In six years in France he sold one painting. Seine, of 1950, arranges black and white rectangles by chance, as do the eight collages of Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance of 1951, and seeing Monet's late work in 1952 pushed him towards very large formats.
Betty Parsons gave him his first New York show in May 1956, and the Whitney put Atlantic, Bar and Painting in Three Panels into Young America 1957. He worked at Coenties Slip, at times sharing a studio with Agnes Martin. Yellow Piece, of 1966, was his first shaped canvas, and Green White, of 1968, the first appearance of the triangle. Gray, a series of twelve begun in 1972 and finished in 1983, started as an anti-war statement. His partner, the photographer Jack Shear, joined him at Spencertown in 1984 and directs the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation.
Best auction results
- Red Curve VII $9.8m
- Oil on canvas, 1982 · New York · 13 November 2019
- Publicly reported
Results as reported at the time of sale, inclusive of buyer's premium. They are a record of what specific works achieved on specific days, not a guide to what any other work is worth.
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.
