Ellsworth Kelly

Sketchbook #26, New York City

1954-56

Spiral-bound sketchbook with pencil, ink, colored ink, ballpoint pen, felt-tip pen, watercolor, and gouache on paper

Not on view

This page from a sketchbook made in New York in the mid-1950s demonstrates the multiple ways in which Kelly used this format. Annotated pencil diagrams test compositional proportions, while watercolor trials experiment with color combinations. In some cases, these investigations are aided by dimensional collage elements, as in the piece of green tape that seems to help the artist determine the angle of a corresponding quadrilateral.

Gallery label from

2023

Medium Spiral-bound sketchbook with pencil, ink, colored ink, ballpoint pen, felt-tip pen, watercolor, and gouache on paper
Dimensions 14 1/8 × 10 7/8 × 1/2" (35.9 × 27.6 × 1.3 cm)
Credit Gift of Jack Shear
Object number 347.2020.1-40
Department Drawings and Prints

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Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly

American, 1923–2015 338 works online

In 1951, the 28-year-old artist Ellsworth Kelly submitted a grant to the Guggenheim Foundation, proposing “an alphabet of plastic pictorial elements, aiming to establish a new scale of painting, a closer contact between the artist and the wall, providing a way for painting to accompany modern architecture.

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