Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kellywas an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing simplicity of form, similar to the work of John McLaughlin and Kenneth Noland. Kelly often employed bright colors. He lived and worked in Spencertown, New York...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth31 May 1923
CountryUnited States of America
eye thinking mind
I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract.
color space curves
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.
black-and-white color want
I'm not interested in edges. I'm interested in the mass and color, the black and white. The edges happen because the forms get as quiet as they can be. I want the masses to perform. When I work with forms and colors, I get the edge...
form ifs geometric
My forms are geometric, but they don't interact in a geometric sense. They're just forms that exist everywhere, even if you don't see them.
glasses broken anything-goes
Everything that I saw became something to be made, and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already made, and I could take from everything. It all belonged to me: a glass roof of a factory, with its broken and patched panels, lines on a road map, a corner of a Braque painting, paper fragments in the street. It was all the same: anything goes.
real ideas rose
A lot of young painters love to incorporate celebrity. One idea of being a painter is to use what's happening at the time. Velázquez was painting of his time. And so was Rembrandt. And Francis Bacon was painting his time in London. He was a real mover, but he saw the insect in the rose. But yes, when I do a painting, I want to take the "I did this" out of it. That's why I started using chance, like the markings on the wood. I never wanted to compose.
photography mean giving
Photography isolates the world via an aperture and gives the photographer the means to see differently, to achieve a spontaneous vision that is direct and uncompromising.
strong color two
Shape and color are my two strong things. And by doing this, drawing plants has always led me into my paintings and my sculptures.
color drawing done
All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation.
drawing lines want
I don't labor over my drawings. I want to get freedom in the line.
sculpture woods painting
The paintings to me are always canvas; sculpture has always been metal, though I have made sculpture in wood, also.
drawing half hours
My drawings have to be quick. If they don't happen in 20 minutes or a half hour, then they're no good.
drawing
All my work begins with drawings.
drawing trying copying
Shading is more like copying. And certainly I do copy, but I'm making drawings, and I'm not trying to make them with the shading.