Ellsworth Kelly Art for Sale: Prints & Originals

Ellsworth
Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly, a visionary in 20th-century abstract art, is known for his distinctive Colour Field paintings and minimalist sculptures.If you’re looking for original Ellsworth Kelly prints and editions for sale or would like to sell, request a complimentary valuation and browse our network’s most in-demand works.

Biography

Born in 1923 in Newburgh, New York, Kelly displayed an early interest in art, studying at the Pratt Institute before serving in World War II. His military service, which included time in Europe, exposed him to a wide range of artistic traditions that would later inform his style. After the war, he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and later moved to Paris, where he immersed himself in the European avant-garde scene. Kelly's early works reflected a fascination with abstraction, influenced by artists like Matisse and Mondrian.

Upon his return to the United States, Kelly’s work began to crystallise into the bold, abstract style that defined his career. His paintings and sculptures focused on geometric shapes, often isolating them in monochromatic fields. His mastery of colour and form is evident in series such as Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance and Blue Green Red, which showcase his unique ability to convey emotion through abstraction.

Collaborative ventures were not a prominent feature of Kelly's career, as journey was largely a solitary pursuit. However, the influences of fellow artists and movements were implicitly present in his work, seen in his dialogue with the bold geometric abstraction of the Bauhaus and Constructivism, to the organic forms of Surrealism and the colour theories of Neoplasticism.

Throughout his career, Kelly's artwork featured in numerous major exhibitions, including a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1973. His commitment to purity of form and colour earned him several awards, including the National Medal of Arts presented to him by President Obama in 2013.

Kelly's legacy is one of profound simplicity and innovation, his work forever altering the landscape of American abstract art. His pieces, though minimalistic, speak volumes on the essence of visual experience, echoing through the halls of modern art history and influencing generations of artists who continue to explore the boundaries between form, colour, and space.

Kelly's pioneering abstract works are fundamental to the hard-edge painting style, characterised by areas of flat, single-colour planes delineated by sharp, clean edges. With a career spanning over six decades, Kelly diverged from the gestural painting of his contemporaries in the 1950s and 60s. His work is a study in simplicity and precision, challenging viewers to engage with the visual relationships between shape and negative space, often on a monumental scale.
Kelly's unique approach to art was partly inspired by his time in the Ghost Army during World War II, a unit of soldiers including many artists tasked with creating deceptive camouflage. This experience honed his understanding of shape and shadow, which later influenced his minimalist aesthetic. Post-war, Kelly lived in Paris, where he absorbed influences from the works of artists like Jean Arp and Constantin Brâncuși, as well as the architectural environment, distilling these into his distinctive abstract visual language.
Kelly’s freestanding works, often fabricated in steel or aluminium, share the same consideration of form and interaction with space as his paintings. Curve XXII, a monumental sculpture created from weathering steel, features a large, gently curved form that interacts with its surroundings. Positioned outdoors, it not only occupies but also shapes the space around it, creating a dialogue between art and environment.

Ellsworth
Kelly