Edited by Ann Temkin. With contributions by Ann Temkin and James N. Wood

 

In 1970, Ellsworth Kelly left Manhattan, where he had been living and working since the mid-1950s, for a new home in rural Columbia County, 130 miles north of the city. Here, in the town of Chatham, he established a studio more capacious than any he had previously occupied, in a century-old building that had once been a theater. The first series he produced in that space, fourteen large-scale paintings, all rely on a single formal concept—each ell-shaped work is made of two joined canvases of pure monochrome color—yet the works vary in color and proportion from one to the next.

 

Published in conjunction with the first presentation of all fourteen works since they were exhibited together at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, in 1972, this richly illustrated catalogue traces the artist's explorations of shape, color, and spatiality from the early 1950s to today, and provides an in-depth look at a significant period in the artist's oeuvre. 48 pp.; 48 illus.