Ellsworth Kelly - Los Angeles

Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Ellsworth Kelly: Los Angeles, the first exhibition in his new gallery in Los Angeles.

Ellsworth Kelly: Los Angeles includes six new two-panel paintings, all of which are being exhibited here for the first time. The paintings are each made from a single shaped canvas featuring a dramatic curve carefully painted with many coats of a bright color (blue, green, yellow, orange, etc). These curved panels are attached to a rectangular canvas painted in a contrasting color.

Also on view are a group of 1952-54 collages Kelly made in Paris as a young man, including Study for Black and White Panels, and a 1966 painting Black Over White. These works are the inspiration for Kelly’s monumental sculpture installed on the façade of the building. Among his largest works, Kelly’s new Los Angeles sculpture is the first to incorporate the building’s architecture into his own work. In one succinct gesture, the entire façade has become part of his sculpture.

At 88, Ellsworth Kelly is among the world’s most distinguished living artists. Since his first one-person exhibition more than 60 years ago, his consistently original vision has been without peer. His work has been the subject of countless museum exhibitions around the world including major retrospectives organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1973); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1979); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (1996). Currently, he has two museum exhibitions on view in Munich, Ellsworth Kelly: Black and White at the Haus der Kunst and Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings at the Pinakothek der Moderne, which travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in June 2012. Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Paintings opens at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on January 22, 2012.

The opening of Ellsworth Kelly: Los Angeles marks Ellsworth Kelly’s fifteenth solo exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery since 1992.

Ellsworth Kelly
Los Angeles
1062 North Orange Grove