Ellsworth Kelly

Brushstrokes Cut into Twenty-Seven Squares and Arranged by Chance

1951

Scroll

Ellsworth Kelly

Brushstrokes Cut into Twenty-Seven Squares and Arranged by Chance

1951

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

Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, "Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948-1955," Cambridge, 6 March - 16 May 1999; circulated to High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 8 June - 5 Aug. 1999; Art Institute of Chicago, 11 Sept. - 5 Dec., 1999; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, 15 Jan.- 19 March, 2000; Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1 April-28 May, 2000; Kunstmuseum Bonn, 29 June- 27 Aug., 2000.

BMA, 'New on View,' June 19-Oct. 6, 2002.

Darsie Alexander, BMA "Robert Motherwell: Meanings of Abstraction," May 20, 2006 - July 30, 2006.

Darsie Alexander, BMA, "Front Room: Ellsworth Kelly," November 14, 2007 - February 17, 2008.

Kristen Hileman and Jay Fisher, BMA, "Drawings from the Suzanne F. Cohen Collection," 13 February - 25 August 2013.