Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings

Ellsworth Kelly is one of the most important living American painters and sculptors. His career is closely tied to the abstract style of "hard-edge" painting in the Sixties, with color field painting and the Minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques that emphasize the simplicity of form, frequently enhanced by bright colors. Alongside his geometrical paintings, Kelly is famous for his beautiful drawings of plants, flowers, and leaves, which were shown together with Matisse s plant drawings at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2002. His book of drawings and watercolors is appearing to coincide with a large museum show that starts at Graphische Sammlung, Munich, in fall 2011 and which will travel on to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in spring 2012. Two texts by the curators (Michael Semff, Munich, and Marla Prather, New York) describe the plant drawings in the context of Ellsworth Kelly s oeuvre as a whole.