The comprehensive presentation — which includes rarely seen works — charts the artist’s lifelong exploration of the relationship between form, colour, line, and space. Among the highlights are early foundational works such as Painting for a White Wall (1952) and Painting in Three Panels (1956) in which Kelly pares painting down to its simplest form and engages the surrounding architecture. Also included is Yellow Curve (1990), his first floor-based painting, which exemplifies the artist’s preoccupation with blurring the distinction between painting, sculpture and installation.
Ellsworth Kelly at 100 also features work from the seminal Chatham Series (1971), drawings and works on paper from the late 1940s to the early 2000s, and a selection of the artist’s lesser-known photographs (1950-1982).
The exhibition celebrates what would have been Kelly’s 100th birthday (in 2023) and introduces the MENASA region to the artist’s work, which has profoundly influenced modern and contemporary art, design and aesthetics.
