Accession Number
1965/2.87

Title
Yellow and Black

Artist(s)
Ellsworth Kelly

Artist Nationality
American (North American)

Object Creation Date
1964-1965

Medium & Support
lithograph on paper

Dimensions
35 5/16 x 23 7/16 in. (89.6 x 59.5 cm);40 x 28 in. (101.6 x 71 cm)

Credit Line
Museum Purchase

Label copy
Sketching the landscape along the shore near his hometown of Hackensack, New Jersey, Ellsworth Kelly developed an early interest in natural forms that would become a recurring theme throughout his work. Kelly attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study applied arts though a year and a half into his courses he was drafted into the army. Working as a camouflage artist, Kelly’s service took him to Europe with time spent in and around Paris where he saw for the first time the work of the European Surrealists. Following his army discharge, Kelly enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to study painting and art history on the G.I. Bill. While many artists of his generation were living and working in New York, Kelly moved to France and immersed himself in European life. In the summer of 1949, he was introduced to the Surrealist technique of automatic drawing in which an image is rendered without looking at the paper but maintaining an unbroken visual connection between eye and object. It was a defining moment for Kelly in which the notion of drawing as a rigid and controlled activity was completely broken down and art became a spontaneous act with often surprising results. In 1954 Kelly moved to New York and through friendships made in France with avant-garde artists John Cage and Merce Cunningham, he was introduced to artists of the second generation of the New York School.
In Yellow and Black we see an example of Ellsworth Kelly’s signature style, in which large fields of color are often juxtaposed in startling contrast free from any trace of brushwork. In this lithograph of 1965 we see Kelly’s characteristic use of forms to illustrate spatial tension and create visual interest. In some works his forms push against the picture plane, straining the boundaries of the composition. Here we have an example of his forms pushing against each other, the pressure point centered in the middle of the composition. It is a work whose visual simplicity stands in stark contrast to the force felt within it.
Katie Weiss, Research Assistant, on the occasion of the exhibition The New York School: Abstract Expressionism and Beyond and Beyond, July 20, 2002 – January 19, 2003

Primary Object Classification
Print

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
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Keywords
abstraction
modern and contemporary art