ART CITIES:N.York-Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly has been a widely influential force in the post-war art world. He first rose to critical acclaim in the 1950s with his bright, multi-paneled and largely monochromatic canvases. Maintaining a persistent focus on the dynamic relationships between shape, form and color, Kelly was one of the first artists to create irregularly shaped canvases. His subsequent layered reliefs, flat sculptures, and line drawings further challenged viewers’ conceptions of space.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Matthew Marks Gallery

In 1978, Ellsworth Kelly was commissioned to create a painting for the lobby of a new building in Cincinnati. The “Color Panels for a Large Wall” that resulted, was the largest work he had ever made, now is in the Collection of The National Gallery of Art in Washington. The exhibition “Ellsworth Kelly: Color Panels for a Large Wall” is on presentation at Matthew Marks Gallery. On presentation is “Color Panels for a Large Wall II” (1978), the work was painted simultaneously and is a 107 x 945 cm version that Kelly kept for himself. It preserves the larger painting’s original horizontal composition in two rows of nine panels, and it is being exhibited in the gallery for the first time. Accompanying this painting are related works by Kelly spanning more than fifty years, including paintings, collages, and a scale model for a never-realized sculpture. Ellsworth Kelly created “Color Panels for a Large Wall”, in 1978 for the Central Trust Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. It was installed at the bank until 1992, when the building was renovated and the work was given to the Cincinnati Art Museum. The museum could not find a suitable wall for the work so they contacted the artist, and in 1996 Kelly gave the museum two paintings in exchange for the panels. The work (which represents the artist’s return to color after a period of working in black and white) consists of 18 rectangular monochrome canvases, each painted a different hue-variations on each of the six primary and secondary colors, and two in black. Kelly chose and arranged the colors without any system. The original configuration consisted of two horizontal rows of nine panels on the bank’s 45-meter wall. For the National Gallery of Art, the work reconfigured by the artist into a grid of three rows of six panels each. Kelly prefers the Gallery’s installation of the work to the original. “Color Panels for a Large Wall” was an opportunity for Kelly to explore on a large scale his long-held preoccupation with multipanel, multicolor paintings and the space in which his work is installed. In fact, two earlier works by Kelly make reference to a large wall”: “Color Panels for a Large Wall” (1951), and “Sculpture for a Large Wall” (1957), both in the collection of MoMA. (Sculpture for a Large Wall was originally created for the lobby of the Transportation Building in Philadelphia’s Penn Plaza). “Color Panels for a Large Wall” is able to successfully occupy or “hold” the monumental three-story wall while remaining light in appearance because it incorporates elements typical of Kelly’s work, including precise balances of shape, space, and color. Also representative of Kelly’s approach is his use of multiple panels whose relationship to the wall replaces the conventional figure-ground relationships found within paintings composed of a single canvas. In this way, Kelly’s work is integrated into the space of the installation—unlike most conventional framed paintings, which are understood to be self-contained and distinct from the wall.

Info: Matthew Marks Gallery, 523 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 3/11-22/12/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.matthewmarks.com