Ellsworth Kelly

Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Ellsworth Kelly Last Paintings.

The ten canvases in Ellsworth Kelly Last Paintings, made in the months leading up to Kelly’s death in December 2015, are the culmination of his seven-decade pursuit of a singular artistic vision. As John Coplans once wrote, “Kelly is quite likely to delve into any part of his repertoire and at any time add variations that may have been conceived months or years previously.” This practice continued until the end of Kelly’s life, and several of his last paintings are either variations of earlier works or based on studies he made not just months or years but sometimes decades before. A new diptych revisits a single-panel 1963 painting, eliminating the background and allowing the shapes to float free on the wall. A three-panel painting is a variation of a 1954 collage Study for Four Color Panels. In the new work Kelly has removed the white panel and, in a similar way to the diptych, allowed the white of the wall to complete the composition.

The exhibition is accompanied by a clothbound catalogue with an essay by Branden W. Joseph and photographs by Jack Shear of Kelly’s studio as he left it on his last day of painting.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated clothbound catalogue.