Ellsworth Kelly

Sketchbook #27, New York City

1954-58

Sketchbook with pencil, ink, felt-tip pen, watercolor, and cut-and-pasted colored and printed paper

Not on view

The nearly three hundred pages of this sketchbook show how the artist transformed fleetingly glimpsed forms and everyday materials into a rich visual vocabulary: from a piece of shiny gold paper that takes on the aura of a precious stone, to the sketched figure of a number “6” that becomes the basis for a seemingly abstract composition. Kelly even explored the sculptural possibilities of this intimate format through the inclusion of a red pop-up element.

Gallery label from

2023

Medium Sketchbook with pencil, ink, felt-tip pen, watercolor, and cut-and-pasted colored and printed paper
Dimensions 8 1/2 × 5 1/2 × 1 3/8" (21.6 × 14 × 3.5 cm)
Credit Gift of Jack Shear
Object number 348.2020.1-304
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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