other artists

• Ana Mendieta
• Francis Bacon
• Hiroshi Sugimoto
• Alexander Calder
• Willem de Kooning
• Jean Dubuffet
• Alberto Giacometti
• Henri Matisse
• Henry Moore
• Gerhard Richter
• Auguste Rodin
• Ed Ruscha
• David Smith
• Nikki Lee
• Man Ray
• John Baldessari
• Arshile Gorky

in depth: Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly (American, born 1931) traveled to Paris on an education grant from the GI Bill after serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. Kelly lived in Paris for six years where he abandoned figural painting in favor of abstraction. He met Merce Cunningham and John Cage, who were both guests at his hotel and became interested in the Surrealist technique of automatic drawing and in the role of chance in art. Kelly also drew inspiration from his surroundings in Paris where he became fascinated with the abstract forms created by the interplay of light and shadow on the facades of buildings. By taking real life objects as a starting point for his abstract compositions, Kelly differentiated himself from a number of his American contemporaries such as Josef Albers and Ad Reinhardt.

Upon returning to New York, Kelly began working on large canvases that featured simple geometric and organic shapes using flat colors and sharp edges, a style that has been labeled hard-edge painting. Kelly’s approach to abstract painting takes on sculptural elements with his use of shaped canvases and groupings of multiple panels of contrasting colors. His steel, aluminum, and stainless steel sculptures, on the other hand, tend not to continue the exploration of color and space found in his paintings and instead have a two-dimensional appearance.

The Hirshhorn has twenty-two works by the artist in the collection.