Ellsworth Kelly Postcards
Saturday, August 27, 2022 - Sunday, November 27, 2022
Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), whose monumental last work, Austin, is in the Blanton’s permanent collection, is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His abstract paintings, sculptures, and prints are masterworks in the exploration of line, form, and color. In a lesser-known part of his practice, Kelly made collaged postcards, some of which served as exploratory musings and others as preparation for larger works in other media. From 1949 to 2005, Kelly made just over 400 postcard works. They show a playful, unbounded space of creative freedom for the artist and provide an important insight into the way Kelly saw, experienced, and translated the world in his art.
Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards will present a comprehensive survey of Kelly’s postcard collages, with 150 works on view. Many postcards reveal specific places where Kelly lived or visited, such as Paris, where Kelly lived in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and where he often returned, or other areas in New York City—My New Studio (1970), is a picture postcard of downtown Old Chatham, New York, with a stapled arrow pointing to the second-floor windows of his new studio building.
This kind of overt biography and revealing details make the postcard collages unique among Kelly’s works. Flashes of the artist’s playfulness show through, which is less visible in his formally rigorous paintings and sculpture.
Gallery TextEllsworth Kelly: Postcards will present a comprehensive survey of Kelly’s postcard collages, with 150 works on view. Many postcards reveal specific places where Kelly lived or visited, such as Paris, where Kelly lived in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and where he often returned, or other areas in New York City—My New Studio (1970), is a picture postcard of downtown Old Chatham, New York, with a stapled arrow pointing to the second-floor windows of his new studio building.
This kind of overt biography and revealing details make the postcard collages unique among Kelly’s works. Flashes of the artist’s playfulness show through, which is less visible in his formally rigorous paintings and sculpture.
Introduction
Widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) is known for his
abstract paintings, sculptures, and prints that are masterworks in line, form, and color. Having played a pivotal role in the
development of postwar art, Kelly’s inventive approach to abstraction draws on found composition and observation of the
physical world.
In a rarely seen aspect of his practice, Kelly made approximately four hundred postcard collages over the course of more than fifty years. Some were exploratory musings, while others served as studies for larger works in other media or a means to revisit important concepts from years prior. This comprehensive survey of Kelly’s postcard collages ranges from his first monochrome painting in 1949 through his final collages of crashing ocean waves in 2005. Resisting clear taxonomies of abstraction and representation, these works show an unbounded space of creative freedom and provide important insight into the way Kelly experienced and translated the world through his art.
Many postcards illustrate specific places where the artist lived or visited, introducing biography and illuminating context that make these pieces unique among his broader artistic production. During Kelly’s lifetime, most of these works were held privately by the artist, only occasionally making their way into institutional collections. Many were sent to friends and colleagues as personal correspondence, though many more were kept in his studio. Revealing an unrestrained curiosity and the breadth of his practice, Kelly’s postcard collages are as humorous and intimate as they are formal and discerning. Together, they offer an alternative lens through which to understand Kelly’s artistic life and ways of seeing.
Visual Play and the Framing Edge, 1954–61
After six formative years in Paris, Kelly moved to New York City in 1954. He established himself in downtown Manhattan in Coenties Slip, as part of a community of artists that included Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, and Jack Youngerman.
Kelly’s early postcard collages evidence several sustained interests seen across his work more broadly. Gauloise Blue with Red Curve (1954) is among his first explorations in any medium with a curved form, a shape he would experiment with for decades. In this piece, Kelly inserts an inverted bell-shaped curve in red against a white ground and blue scrap ripped from a French Gauloises cigarette pack.
The artist’s love of visual games and strategies for playing with vision materializes in his postcard collages at this moment. In three such works from 1957—Four Greens, Upper Manhattan Bay; Four Blacks and Whites, Upper Manhattan Bay; and Jersey Coast—Kelly creates a framing edge, a window or aperture through which to fragment vision and oscillate the focal point between foreground and background, by placing collaged elements along the perimeter of the postcard. Kelly achieves a similar state of play using lettering that both obscures and highlights aspects of the original postcard, as in Horizontal A (1957) or Most (1960), which isolates sailboats on a horizon using the negative space of the cutout O.
Accidental Dimensions and Chromatic Complexity, 1964–75
In the modest and uniform size of the postcards, Kelly was able to achieve scale instantly, allowing him to explore shape and color against landscape and architecture. In 1964, the artist used torn color proofs of his own lithographs for a series of collages on postcards of Paris monuments.
Following Kelly’s move to upstate New York in 1970, My New Studio (1970) explicitly references biographical detail by featuring blue and yellow arrows stapled to a local picture postcard that point to Kelly’s new studio in downtown Chatham, New York. Collaged on a postcard that captures the same vantage of Main Street, Spectrum Circle (1974), modifies the color progressions developed throughout Kelly’s Spectrum series in other media (1953–2014), presenting a cut out circle with the conventional red to violet prismatic sequence. Although Kelly created his own meticulous color blends for his paintings, with the postcard collages he used found colors while maintaining the perceptual effects of specific color juxtapositions.
During this period, the postcard collages begin to directly reflect his life outside the studio, including travel. Articles of clothing and body parts out of context become recurring subjects. Pop culture icon Marilyn Monroe figures in multiple postcard collages of this era, including her disembodied nose in Nose/Sailboat (1974). As the decade of the 1970s progresses, Kelly experiments increasingly with geometric shapes of various colors, suspended or grounded against the natural landscape.
Seeking Essences of Form and Experience, 1975–80
As referenced in a number of works, Kelly’s visits to the Caribbean island of St. Martin, where his friend, artist Jasper Johns has a home, proved inspirational for his postcard collage practice.
An extended group of iconic Kellyesque forms, cut from largely dark gray or black-and-white found paper, are set against the backdrop of numerous travel postcards from the island. The beachscape afforded him the opportunity to use the horizon line to explore angle, color, and form while the anonymity of the materials allowed him to test scale and three-dimensionality.
While the majority of postcard collages do not directly correlate to completed works in other media, a few from the late 1970s did result in large-scale pieces, including Concorde Hotel I (1977), which became the shaped painting Curved Gray Panel (1977); and Long Bay Beach (1977), a study for his two-panel painting White and Dark Gray Panels I (1977).
In these works, one discovers how Kelly used the same postcard multiple times, as a way to experiment with different shapes and configurations.
Just as Kelly’s adoption of the medium paralleled the increasing popularity of the photochrome postcard during the 1950s, the intensity of his postcard collage production waned as the decade of the 1980s progressed, due in large part to the decline in the print quality of mass- produced postcards.
Materials and Monuments, 1984–94
Using a variety of found paper materials throughout his postcard collages, Kelly also employed ready-made ephemera with threedimensional qualities. Featured as collaged elements on postcards with architectural landmarks, these sculptural materials prompt specific surreal relationships with the built environment. In Sta. Maria del Mar I (1985), a fragment of a vinyl record echoes the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral in Barcelona, a city whose artistic legacy related to Antoni Gaudí had a profound impact on Kelly. Revisiting his own Chatham series from the early 1970s in which two joined canvases of different colors form an inverted L, in Blue Yellow (Saint-Michel, Paris) (1985), Kelly positions Paris metro tickets to evoke the shape, while obscuring the rose window and facade of the famous Sainte-Chapelle. These particular postcard collages reveal a continuity of Kelly’s interests, spanning decades but formed during his early years in France, when he sought out visual experiences focused on architecture and the cityscape to formulate strategies for abstraction.
At the same time that Kelly continued to find the backdrop of travel postcard views befitting his collaged interventions, he also cultivated the use of museum postcards that depict works of art historical significance. The Young Spartans (1984) transforms Edgar Degas’s painting, with its curious iconography of a competition among adolescents, into a one-sided clash between a group of young boys and Kelly’s collaged red-and-white form.
In a rarely seen aspect of his practice, Kelly made approximately four hundred postcard collages over the course of more than fifty years. Some were exploratory musings, while others served as studies for larger works in other media or a means to revisit important concepts from years prior. This comprehensive survey of Kelly’s postcard collages ranges from his first monochrome painting in 1949 through his final collages of crashing ocean waves in 2005. Resisting clear taxonomies of abstraction and representation, these works show an unbounded space of creative freedom and provide important insight into the way Kelly experienced and translated the world through his art.
Many postcards illustrate specific places where the artist lived or visited, introducing biography and illuminating context that make these pieces unique among his broader artistic production. During Kelly’s lifetime, most of these works were held privately by the artist, only occasionally making their way into institutional collections. Many were sent to friends and colleagues as personal correspondence, though many more were kept in his studio. Revealing an unrestrained curiosity and the breadth of his practice, Kelly’s postcard collages are as humorous and intimate as they are formal and discerning. Together, they offer an alternative lens through which to understand Kelly’s artistic life and ways of seeing.
Visual Play and the Framing Edge, 1954–61
After six formative years in Paris, Kelly moved to New York City in 1954. He established himself in downtown Manhattan in Coenties Slip, as part of a community of artists that included Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, and Jack Youngerman.
Kelly’s early postcard collages evidence several sustained interests seen across his work more broadly. Gauloise Blue with Red Curve (1954) is among his first explorations in any medium with a curved form, a shape he would experiment with for decades. In this piece, Kelly inserts an inverted bell-shaped curve in red against a white ground and blue scrap ripped from a French Gauloises cigarette pack.
The artist’s love of visual games and strategies for playing with vision materializes in his postcard collages at this moment. In three such works from 1957—Four Greens, Upper Manhattan Bay; Four Blacks and Whites, Upper Manhattan Bay; and Jersey Coast—Kelly creates a framing edge, a window or aperture through which to fragment vision and oscillate the focal point between foreground and background, by placing collaged elements along the perimeter of the postcard. Kelly achieves a similar state of play using lettering that both obscures and highlights aspects of the original postcard, as in Horizontal A (1957) or Most (1960), which isolates sailboats on a horizon using the negative space of the cutout O.
Accidental Dimensions and Chromatic Complexity, 1964–75
In the modest and uniform size of the postcards, Kelly was able to achieve scale instantly, allowing him to explore shape and color against landscape and architecture. In 1964, the artist used torn color proofs of his own lithographs for a series of collages on postcards of Paris monuments.
Following Kelly’s move to upstate New York in 1970, My New Studio (1970) explicitly references biographical detail by featuring blue and yellow arrows stapled to a local picture postcard that point to Kelly’s new studio in downtown Chatham, New York. Collaged on a postcard that captures the same vantage of Main Street, Spectrum Circle (1974), modifies the color progressions developed throughout Kelly’s Spectrum series in other media (1953–2014), presenting a cut out circle with the conventional red to violet prismatic sequence. Although Kelly created his own meticulous color blends for his paintings, with the postcard collages he used found colors while maintaining the perceptual effects of specific color juxtapositions.
During this period, the postcard collages begin to directly reflect his life outside the studio, including travel. Articles of clothing and body parts out of context become recurring subjects. Pop culture icon Marilyn Monroe figures in multiple postcard collages of this era, including her disembodied nose in Nose/Sailboat (1974). As the decade of the 1970s progresses, Kelly experiments increasingly with geometric shapes of various colors, suspended or grounded against the natural landscape.
Seeking Essences of Form and Experience, 1975–80
As referenced in a number of works, Kelly’s visits to the Caribbean island of St. Martin, where his friend, artist Jasper Johns has a home, proved inspirational for his postcard collage practice.
An extended group of iconic Kellyesque forms, cut from largely dark gray or black-and-white found paper, are set against the backdrop of numerous travel postcards from the island. The beachscape afforded him the opportunity to use the horizon line to explore angle, color, and form while the anonymity of the materials allowed him to test scale and three-dimensionality.
While the majority of postcard collages do not directly correlate to completed works in other media, a few from the late 1970s did result in large-scale pieces, including Concorde Hotel I (1977), which became the shaped painting Curved Gray Panel (1977); and Long Bay Beach (1977), a study for his two-panel painting White and Dark Gray Panels I (1977).
In these works, one discovers how Kelly used the same postcard multiple times, as a way to experiment with different shapes and configurations.
Just as Kelly’s adoption of the medium paralleled the increasing popularity of the photochrome postcard during the 1950s, the intensity of his postcard collage production waned as the decade of the 1980s progressed, due in large part to the decline in the print quality of mass- produced postcards.
Materials and Monuments, 1984–94
Using a variety of found paper materials throughout his postcard collages, Kelly also employed ready-made ephemera with threedimensional qualities. Featured as collaged elements on postcards with architectural landmarks, these sculptural materials prompt specific surreal relationships with the built environment. In Sta. Maria del Mar I (1985), a fragment of a vinyl record echoes the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral in Barcelona, a city whose artistic legacy related to Antoni Gaudí had a profound impact on Kelly. Revisiting his own Chatham series from the early 1970s in which two joined canvases of different colors form an inverted L, in Blue Yellow (Saint-Michel, Paris) (1985), Kelly positions Paris metro tickets to evoke the shape, while obscuring the rose window and facade of the famous Sainte-Chapelle. These particular postcard collages reveal a continuity of Kelly’s interests, spanning decades but formed during his early years in France, when he sought out visual experiences focused on architecture and the cityscape to formulate strategies for abstraction.
At the same time that Kelly continued to find the backdrop of travel postcard views befitting his collaged interventions, he also cultivated the use of museum postcards that depict works of art historical significance. The Young Spartans (1984) transforms Edgar Degas’s painting, with its curious iconography of a competition among adolescents, into a one-sided clash between a group of young boys and Kelly’s collaged red-and-white form.
Introduccíon
Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) es considerado uno de los artistas más influyentes del siglo XX. Es famoso por sus pinturas abstractas, esculturas y grabados que son obras maestras de la línea, la forma y el color. Después de haber tenido un papel fundamental en el desarrollo del arte de la posguerra, el enfoque inventivo de la abstracción de Kelly se basa en la composición encontrada y la observación del mundo físico.
Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) es considerado uno de los artistas más influyentes del siglo XX. Es famoso por sus pinturas abstractas, esculturas y grabados que son obras maestras de la línea, la forma y el color. Después de haber tenido un papel fundamental en el desarrollo del arte de la posguerra, el enfoque inventivo de la abstracción de Kelly se basa en la composición encontrada y la observación del mundo físico.
En un aspecto de su ejercicio que rara vez se ve, realizó alrededor de cuatrocientos collages en postales a lo largo de más de cincuenta años. Algunos fueron contemplaciones exploratorias, mientras que otros sirvieron como estudios para obras de formato más grande en otros medios o como un recurso para repasar conceptos importantes de años anteriores. Este estudio integral de los collages en postales de Kelly abarca desde sus primeras pinturas monocromáticas de 1949 hasta sus collages finales de 2005 de olas marinas chocando. Estas obras resisten claras taxonomías de abstracción y representación, y muestran un espacio ilimitado de libertad creativa a la vez que proporcionan una perspectiva importante en la forma en que Kelly
experimentaba y traducía el mundo por medio de su arte.
En muchas postales se ilustran sitios específicos en los que vivió el artista o que visitó, y presentan así un contexto biográfico y esclarecedor que hace a estas piezas únicas entre su producción artística más amplia. Kelly retuvo la mayoría de estas obras en forma privada durante su vida, y solo en ocasiones tuvieron un lugar en colecciones institucionales. Muchas se enviaron a amigos y colegas como correspondencia personal, aunque muchas más se conservaron en su estudio. Las postales de Kelly revelan una curiosidad desatada y la amplitud de su ejercicio: los collages de Kelly son humorísticos e íntimos a la vez que formales y perceptivos. En conjunto, ofrecen una lente alternativa por la cual entender la vida artística de Kelly y sus formas de ver.
El juego visual y el borde del enmarcado, 1954–61
Después de seis años formativos en París, Kelly se trasladó a la ciudad de Nueva York en 1954. Se estableció en el centro de Manhattan en Coenties Slip, como parte de una comunidad de artistas que incluía a Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist y Jack Youngerman.
Los primeros collages de postales de Kelly son evidencia de varios intereses sostenidos que se ven en líneas más generales en toda su obra. Azul Gauloise con curva roja (1954) está entre sus primeras exploraciones de cualquier medio con una figura curvada, forma con la que experimentaría durante décadas. En esta obra, Kelly inserta una curva invertida en forma de campana en rojo contra un suelo blanco y un fragmento azul rasgado de un paquete de cigarrillos franceses Gauloises.
El amor del artista por los juegos visuales y las estrategias para jugar con la visión se materializa en sus collages en postales en este momento. En tres de esas obras de 1957, Cuatro verdes, Bahía Upper de Manhattan; Cuatro negros y blancos, Bahía Upper en Manhattan; y Costa de Jersey, Kelly crea un borde de enmarcado, una ventana de apertura por la cual se fragmenta la visión y hace oscilar el punto focal entre el primer plano y el fondo, al colocar elementos de collage a lo largo del perímetro de la postal. Kelly logra un estado lúdico similar con el uso de letras que ocultan y resaltan a la vez aspectos de la postal original, como A horizontal (1957) o Lo más (1960), en las cuales usa el espacio negativo de la “O” recortada para aislar unos veleros en el horizonte.
Dimensiones accidentales y complejidad cromática, 1964–75
En el tamaño modesto y uniforme de las postales, Kelly pudo lograr modificar la escala en forma instantánea, lo que le permitió explorar la forma y el color en contraste con el paisaje y la arquitectura. En 1964, el artista usó pruebas de colores rasgadas en sus propias litografías para una serie de collages en postales de monumentos de París.
Tras el traslado de Kelly al norte del estado de Nueva York en 1970, su obra Mi nuevo estudio (1970) hace referencia explícita a un detalle biográfico al presentar flechas azules y amarillas grapadas a una postal con una fotografía local que señalan hacia el nuevo estudio de Kelly en el centro de Chatham, Nueva York. En un collage sobre una postal que captura el mismo punto de observación de la calle principal, Espectro circular (1974), Kelly modifica las progresiones de color desarrolladas en la serie Espectro en otros medios (1953–2014), y presenta un círculo recortado con la secuencia prismática convencional de rojo a violeta. Aunque Kelly creó sus propias mezclas minuciosas de color para sus cuadros, con los collages en postales usó colores comunes a la vez que mantenía los efectos de percepción de yuxtaposiciones de colores específicos.
Durante este período, los collages sobre postales comenzaron a reflejar directamente su vida fuera del estudio, como sus viajes. Las prendas de vestir y partes corporales fuera de contexto se volvieron temas recurrentes. Marilyn Monroe, ícono de la cultura popular, figura en varios collages en postales de esta época, incluyendo su nariz sin cuerpo en Nariz/velero (1974). A medida que avanza la década de 1970, Kelly experimenta cada vez más con figuras geométricas de diversos colores, ancladas o suspendidas contra el paisaje natural.
En busca de las esencias de la forma y la experiencia, 1964–75
Como se indica en varias obras, las visitas de Kelly a la isla caribeña de St. Martin, donde tenía una casa su amigo, el artista Jasper Johns, demostraron ser inspiradoras para su trabajo en los collages en postales.
Un grupo extenso de icónicas formas Kellyescas, recortadas de papel encontrado principalmente gris o blanco y negro, se ubican contra el telón de fondo de numerosas postales de viaje de la isla. El paisaje de playa le brindaba la oportunidad de usar la línea del horizonte para explorar ángulos, colores y formas mientras que el anonimato de los materiales le permitía hacer pruebas de escala y tridimensionalidad.
Si bien la mayoría de los collages en postales no se correlaciona en forma directa con obras realizadas en otros medios, unas cuantas de finales de la década de 1970 sí derivaron en obras en formato a gran escala, como Hotel Concorde I (1977), que se convirtió en el cuadro con forma Panel gris curvado (1977); y Playa de Long Bay (1977), un estudio para su cuadro de dos paneles Paneles blanco y gris oscuro I (1977).
Para estas obras, Kelly usó la misma postal muchas veces, como una forma de experimentar con diferentes figuras y configuraciones.
Al igual que su adopción del medio iba en paralelo con la popularidad de la postal fotocromática durante la década de 1950, la intensidad de su producción de collages en postales declinó a medida que avanzaba la década de 1980, debido en gran parte al deterioro de la calidad de impresión de las postales producidas en forma masiva.
Materiales y monumentos, 1984–94
Con el uso de materiales de papel encontrados a lo largo de sus collages en postales, Kelly también empleó impresiones efímeras con cualidades tridimensionales. Presentados como elementos de collage sobre postales con puntos de referencia arquitectónicos, estos materiales esculturales dan pie a relaciones surrealistas específicas con el entorno construido. En Sta. María del Mar I (1985), un fragmento de un disco de vinilo recuerda el cielorraso abovedado de la catedral de Barcelona, una ciudad cuyo legado artístico relacionado con Antoni Gaudí tuvo un impacto profundo en Kelly. Al repasar su propia serie de Chatham de principios de la década de 1970, en la que dos lienzos de diferentes colores unidos forman una “L“ invertida, en Azul amarillo (Saint-Michel, París) (1985), Kelly coloca pasajes del metro parisino para evocar la forma mientras oculta la ventana rosada y la fachada de la famosa Sainte-Chapelle. Estos collages sobre postales, en particular, revelan una continuidad de los intereses de Kelly y abarcan décadas, aunque se formaron durante sus primeros años en Francia, cuando el artista buscaba experiencias visuales enfocadas en la arquitectura y el paisaje urbano para formular estrategias de abstracción.
Al mismo tiempo que continuaba su búsqueda del telón de fondo de las vistas de las postales de viaje acordes a sus intervenciones en forma de collage, Kelly también cultivó el uso de postales de museo que representan obras de arte de importancia histórica. En Los jóvenes espartanos (1984) transforma el cuadro de Edgar Degas, con su curiosa iconografía de una competencia entre adolescentes, en un enfrentamiento unilateral entre un grupo de varones jóvenes y la forma roja y blanca del collage de Kelly.