Ellsworth Kelly Curve
1990s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1990s Prints and Multiples
Lithograph
1990s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1970s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1980s Color-Field Abstract Prints
Paper, Lithograph
Early 2000s Minimalist Abstract Prints
Lithograph
2010s Minimalist Abstract Prints
Lithograph
20th Century Abstract Prints
Lithograph
1970s Prints and Multiples
Lithograph
1970s Minimalist Abstract Prints
Other Medium
1970s Abstract Abstract Prints
1970s Minimalist Abstract Prints
Lithograph
1970s Pop Art More Prints
Screen
1960s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Ink, Watercolor
1980s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
Lithograph
Mid-20th Century Modern Portrait Paintings
Oil, Board
People Also Browsed
1960s Minimalist Abstract Prints
Lithograph
1960s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1990s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1980s Prints and Multiples
Offset
Vintage 1950s French Posters
Paper
Vintage 1950s French Posters
Paper
Vintage 1970s American Posters
Paper
1980s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1970s Minimalist More Prints
Screen
1990s French Posters
Linen, Paper
Vintage 1970s French Modern Dining Room Tables
Bronze
1980s Prints and Multiples
Offset
Vintage 1980s French Post-Modern Posters
Aluminum
1960s Modern Figurative Paintings
1970s Prints and Multiples
Paper
Vintage 1960s French Posters
Paper
Recent Sales
21st Century and Contemporary Minimalist Prints and Multiples
Conceptual Abstract Prints
Lithograph
Conceptual Abstract Prints
Lithograph
Early 2000s Contemporary Prints and Multiples
Lithograph
21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Prints
Lithograph
2010s Abstract Prints
Lithograph
Early 20th Century Abstract Abstract Prints
Lithograph
21st Century and Contemporary Minimalist Abstract Prints
Lithograph
21st Century and Contemporary Minimalist Abstract Prints
Lithograph
1970s Abstract Abstract Prints
Paper, Lithograph
1970s Abstract Expressionist Mixed Media
Handmade Paper
1960s Prints and Multiples
Lithograph
1980s Abstract Geometric Abstract Prints
Lithograph
1980s Minimalist Abstract Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil, Graphite
1990s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1990s Prints and Multiples
Screen
1990s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1990s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1970s Prints and Multiples
Offset
1980s Minimalist Abstract Prints
Lithograph, Offset
Late 20th Century Abstract Geometric Abstract Prints
Lithograph
1990s Abstract Abstract Prints
Etching, Aquatint
2010s Abstract Prints
Lithograph
Lithograph
Early 2000s Minimalist Abstract Prints
Lithograph
1980s Prints and Multiples
Lithograph
Lithograph
2010s Contemporary Abstract Paintings
Oil, Vellum
21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Abstract Prints
Lithograph
21st Century and Contemporary Prints and Multiples
Lithograph
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Abstract Prints
Lithograph
1970s Abstract Abstract Prints
Paper, Lithograph
Ellsworth Kelly Curve For Sale on 1stDibs
How Much is a Ellsworth Kelly Curve?
Ellsworth Kelly for sale on 1stDibs
Ellsworth Kelly was one of the key figures in postwar American art, exercising major influence on the fields of Pop art, minimalism, Color-Field and hard-edge painting. Widely known for his brightly colored geometric compositions, he was among the first artists, alongside his contemporary Frank Stella, to use irregularly shaped canvases. Although highly abstract, Kelly’s paintings and prints are precise expressions in color and form of his sensory experience of the world.
Kelly's works, both two- and three-dimensional, are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and displayed at such sites as the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
Kelly grew up in the town of Newburgh, New York, near the Oradell Reservoir. He was an avid birder as a child and loved the colorful illustrations of naturalist John James Audubon. Encouraged to study art by a high school teacher, he enrolled at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, remaining there until 1943, when he was inducted into the army. During World War II, he served along with scores of other artists, in a unit known as the Ghost Army, where he learned the elements of camouflage while creating ersatz trucks and tanks intended to mislead Axis forces.
When the war was over, Kelly took advantage of the G.I. Bill to study painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, drawing inspiration from the museum's collections, and, later, at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, in Paris. While in France, he immersed himself in the varied artistic movements and styles represented there and befriended Americans avant-gardists, such as composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, as well as the German-French Surrealist Jean Arp and Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși.
Upon his return to the United States, in 1954, he found himself at odds with the dominant style of the period, Abstract Expressionism, which favored a dynamic and energetic application of paint in a loose manner. Like Stella, Kelly was interested in formal precision and explorations of color. Following an exhibition of his work at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, Kelly’s work was included in the "Young America 1957” show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
During the 1960s, Kelly played with color and form to tease out and celebrate the tension between a painting’s subject and its background. In one of his most famous works, 1963's Red Blue Green, for example, two shapes, one red, one blue, both contrast and resonate with a green background that extends to the edge of the canvas on both sides, appearing at moments to be the work’s primary shape. To explore this relationship between form and ground further, Kelly began using nontraditional, shaped canvases, as in the monochromatic 1966 Yellow Piece, from, whose two curved corners draws the eye to the wall behind it, as though the gallery wall itself were part of the composition. A lithograph from the same period, Blue and Orange consists of two shapes in the title’s complementary colors facing off against one another with a tension that makes them appear almost animated.
Kelly made drawings and prints throughout his career, using plants and flowers as his primary source of inspiration. Like his paintings, his drawings tend to be relatively flat in perspective, but they are rarely abstract. A 1993 drawing of an oak leaf is clearly representational, but rendered with very minimal color and line. In the mid-1960s, he produced the series “Suite of Twenty-Seven Lithographs” with the Paris-based Maeght Éditeur.
Later, collaborating with Gemini G.E.L., he created very large-scale works, such as 1988’s Purple/Red/Gray/Orange, which is 18 feet long and might be one of the biggest lithographs ever made. Kelly produced 140 sculptures, including the aluminum White Curves, created for the Fondation Beyeler, in Riehen, Switzerland, in 2002. In his three-dimensional works, as in his paintings, Kelly used form, color and light to play with perceptions of surface and depth, inviting viewers to look closely and see the world in a new way.
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Finding the Right Prints and Multiples for You
Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.
Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.
Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.
Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.
Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.
“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.
Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.
For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)
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