Catalogue Ellsworth Kelly. Formes et Couleurs, 1949-2015

Description

Ellsworth Kelly redefined abstraction in the second half of the twentieth century, taking his pure forms, often in bright colours, beyond the expectations of painting and sculpture by observing his direct environment.

Nearly ten years after his death, his works still exert the same fascination, through their intensity and balance, the quality of their visual addresses, the spaces they create, and their paradoxical sensuality expressed in rigour. The Fondation Louis Vuitton is fortunate to be able to bear witness to this on a daily basis thanks to the presence in its auditorium of a permanent installation, one of the artist's most recent creations.

The exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton is the first event in France to reveal the full spectrum of his work, and comprises over a hundred works, including paintings, drawings, photographs and collages. The book published to mark the occasion provides a comprehensive overview of the artist's work. His works are reproduced here, along with studies by people familiar with his work (Jean-Pierre Criqui, Suzanne Hudson) and contributions on lesser-known aspects (Corey Keller on photography, Alex da Corte on the freedom of his work, Sarah Rogers on its reception in the Middle East, Peter Eleey on the memorial dimension). It also includes a richly illustrated chronology that looks back at Kelly's decisive stay in France in the immediate post-war period, and his contribution to the American scene at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. Further, it follows the development and complex ramifications of a body of work that approaches all the scales of perception, from the line on a sheet of paper to the intervention in architectural space.