Ellsworth Kelly TABLET

In 1973, shortly after moving his studio out of New York City, the artist Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923) began sorting through his archives of sketches, studies, and miscellanea that he accumulated over nearly two and half decades. Surprised to find so many echoes in his current work among this material, Kelly set about hand-selecting and mounting disparate but associated pieces. He eventually produced Tablet (1948-1973), consisting of 188 framed works on paper in various media—collage, pencil, ink, oil—with each framed object containing between two to six sketches; the number of individual works totals 819. These sketches—working drawings, essentially—capture Kelly’s observations, random thoughts, and recurrent themes over a 25-year period, and comprise a virtual atlas of the artist’s visual thinking. This extraordinary work (a gift to the Menil by board president Louisa Stude Sarofim, given in honor of Menil trustee James A. Elkins, Jr.) is the largest single donation of art to the museum since founder Dominique de Menil’s bequest in 1997.

Organized by Menil chief curator Matthew Drutt, Ellsworth Kelly: Tablet will present the series for the first time in the context of the artist’s painting and sculpture. By demonstrating the evolution of an idea from inspiration to early exploration and to ultimate finished work of art, the exhibit will provide rare insight into one artist’s working methods.

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