Ellsworth Kelly
Brushstrokes Cut into Twenty-Seven Squares and Arranged by Chance
1950
Scroll
Ellsworth Kelly
Brushstrokes Cut into Twenty-Seven Squares and Arranged by Chance
1950
Physical Qualities
Collage and brush and black ink on paper, Sheet: 121 x 356 mm. (4 3/4 x 14 in.)
Credit Line
Purchased as the gift of Suzanne F. Cohen, Baltimore; and the Nathan L. and Suzanne F. Cohen Contemporary Art Fund
Object Number
1999.100
As a young American artist working in Paris during the early 1950s, Ellsworth Kelly was inspired by patterns of light reflecting off the surface of water and by the shapes of shadows cast by architectural features such as stair rails. Kelly achieved similar effects by brushing long lines of black ink onto white paper. He cut the resulting ink drawing into squares, then reassembled the squares as a collage. The artist used some of these collages as studies for larger scaled paintings (such as Cité, 1951) in which his personal control over the composition was tempered by the role of chance.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase 1999; from Matthew Marks Gallery, New York; from artist's collection
Robert Motherwell: Meanings of Abstraction
Front Room: Ellsworth Kelly
Works from the Suzanne F. Cohen Collection
Bois, Yves-Alain. Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948-1955, Cambridge and Winterthur: Harvard University Art Museums, 1999, plate 98.
