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At the Cahiers d'Art gallery, rue du Dragon in Paris, works on paper by artist Ellsworth Kelly
Cahiers d'Art is pleased to present a new exhibition of works on paper by American artist Ellsworth Kelly.
The exhibition, which spans the gallery's two spaces, features a collection of collages, drawings and postcards dating from the 1950s to Kelly's last collaboration with Cahiers d'Art magazine in 2012.
Conceived in close collaboration with the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, the exhibition invites you to discover Kelly's research into form, colour and composition on paper. The small size of the works provides a unique opportunity to grasp the intimacy of Kelly's artistic process. Spanning seven decades, these pieces illustrate the artist's love of line, form and the beauty of nature's shapes.
Kelly's postcards underline his perfect mastery of inserting a strong aesthetic into a concise composition. Often sent to family and artist friends, these works reflect Kelly's deep attraction to the colours and poetic forms of everyday life.
The collages express Kelly's innovative exploration of formal and chromatic relationships. More than that, they demonstrate his constant experimentation with form and abstraction. Ellsworth Kelly was inspired by the link between abstraction and nature, drawing on it for form and colour. The artist's deep attachment to natural forms is reflected in his plant studies, with their subtle, delicate lines. Through these pure lines, Kelly manages to embody and feel the essence of organic forms.
The link between Ellsworth Kelly and Cahiers d'Art is a continuation of the artist's attraction to the celebrated magazine, which he collected as a young American student in Paris. The Cahiers d'Art Review was famous for covering the different periods in art history, from prehistory to modern art. This editorial choice appealed to Kelly because it echoed his artistic approach and his collection of Amerindian antiquities.
This relationship was sublimated by the return of Cahiers d'Art in 2012, the first publication devoted to Kelly, marking the artist's reunion with his Parisian youth and the story of Cahiers d'Art. By publishing his catalogue raisonné, Cahiers d'Art celebrates Kelly's importance in the history of modern art. In so doing, it reveals Kelly's unique place in modern art and his role in the Cahiers d'Art story.
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) was born in Newburgh, New York. In 1948 he moved to France where he discovered many classical and modern works of art. In 1951, his first solo exhibition was organised by the Galerie Arnaud in Paris. In 1954, Kelly decided to return to New York. In 1973, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organised his first retrospective exhibition. Subsequent exhibitions were held in major museums, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Haus der Kunst in Munich and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Cahiers d'Art
