Beschreibung:

34 Ellsworth Kelly Green White 1968 Oil on canvas. Two joined panels, 71 x 141 in. (180.3 x 358.1 cm.) Initialed and dated “EK 1968” on the overlap; also signed and dated again “KELLY 1968” on the stretcher.
Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York; Galerie Françoise Mayer, Brussels; Blum Helman Gallery Inc., New York; Roger and Myra Davidson, Toronto; Collection of Ginny Williams, Denver (acquired from the above); Sale: Christie’s, New York, Post-War and Contemporary Art (Evening Sale), May 14, 2003, lot 36; Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Paintings and Sculpture by Ellsworth Kelly October 7 -November 2, 1968, no. 4; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Selections from the Roger and Myra Davidson Collection, January 17 - March 22, 1987, p. 33 (illustrated in color and on the cover); Santa Fe, Laura Carpenter Gallery, Ellsworth Kelly Painting and Sculpture, June-July 1992; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art; London, Tate Gallery, and Munich, Haus der Kunst, Ellsworth Kelly A Retrospective, October 18, 1996-January 1998, pl. 53 (illustrated in color) Literature J. Coplans, Ellsworth Kelly New York, 1971, no. 196; E.C. Goosen, Ellsworth Kelly New York, 1973, p. 89 (illustrated); D. Waldman, ed., Ellsworth Kelly A Retrospective, New York, 1996, no. 53 Catalogue Essay Ellsworth Kelly has been pioneering Hard-edge, Color Field painting since the late 1940s. Kelly’s influential practice, which includes painting, drawing and sculpture, reveals the expressive and spiritual qualities of geometric, monochromatic, planes of color. For the past sixty years, Ellsworth Kelly’s work has defined the relationship between space and subjectivity, removing the pictorial barrier between subject and ground. As Kelly asserts “I have worked to free shape from its ground, and then to work the shape so that it has a definite relationship to the space around it, so that it has a clarity and a measure within itself of its parts (angles, curves, edges, and mass), and so that, with color and tonality, the shape finds its own space and always demands its freedom and separateness” (M. Grynsztejn, “Clear-Cut: The Art of Ellsworth Kelly ” Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco, San Francisco, 2002, p. 9). Early in his artistic development, Kelly recognized that color has physical, practical implications. In 1943, Kelly entered the United States Army, serving in the Engineers Camouflage Battalion. At this time, Kelly began to recognize how color can be used to both cloak and reveal, embodying notions of space, content and implied meaning. Through this lens, form and content became physically and theoretically dependent on each other. As Kelly states “The form of my painting is the content. My work is made of single or multiple panels: rectangle, curved or square. I am less interested in marks on the panels than the “presence” of the panels themselves” (K. Stiles and P.H. Selz, “Notes of 1969,” Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists’ writings,” Los Angeles, 1996). Green White marks the debut appearance of the triangle in Ellsworth Kelly’s oeuvre, a shape that reoccurs throughout his distinguished career. Green White is composed of two distinct, shaped monochromatic canvases, which are installed on top of each other: a large-scale, inverted, green trapezoid is positioned vertically above of a smaller white triangle, forming a new geometric composition. Independently, each shape is recognizable by its own inherent structure, however, when combined, the two shapes unite, dynamically shifting and visually transforming into a new geometric entity. Although his practice may appear mathematically rigid, Kelly has always allowed serendipity and intuition to inform his practice. For example, after spotting a woman wearing a green and white scarf in Central Park, he spent the afternoon carefully recording every detail, ensuring he could recreate its exact proportion and palette. This encounter famously served as the point of departure for Kelly’s pivotal painting Jersey (1958), currently in the collection of the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden