Ellsworth Kelly: Untitled. Print from the suite of ten titled 'Ten Works by Ten Painters'. Wadsworth Atheneum, 1964.

hard-edge, large red balloon/breast shape crossing from lower left of sheet toward upper right, against a blue ground.

382/500

Acquired from Kasmin Ltd., London in 1969.

Suite originally housed in a cream cloth-covered portfolio box with cream and white paper lining. On front X / + / X in blue and white and in blue on spine ‘TEN WORKS BY TEN PAINTERS THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM’ Container is unnumbered and housed elsewhere, currently (2011) at the back of '1st Mezz' in the National Art Library. Inside the container still remains four pages (description and transcript below):
Title-page: vertically in black ‘X / + [cut out] / X / [and horizontally through the same +] TEN WORKS [+] TEN PAINTERS / THE WADSWORTH ATHENEUM’
Title-page verso of title-page: ‘Copyright 1964, The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut 67/500 [edition number in pen] / Designed and Produced by Ives-Sillman, New Haven, Connecticut’
Page 2: in caps a list of names: ‘GEORGE ORTMAN / FRANK STELLA / ELLSWORTH KELLY / ROBERT MOTHERWELL / ANDY WARHOL / STUART DAVIS / ROY LICHTENSTEIN / LARRY POONS / ROBERT INDIANA / AD REINHARDT’
Page 3: ‘This portfolio was commissioned and printed in an attempt to extend / as much of the visual impact as pssible of ten artists to paper and / to make the prints available to collectors who might not otherwise / have such a vivid slice of the artist. / The dry surface of screening seemed to be most apt to translate the / effect of their painting, both the flatness which is the unifying bond / between the ten, and the insistence of paint on the surface of canvas / so like the visible heft of ink on paper here. / Samuel J. Wagstaff, Jr. Curator of Paintings’ [followed by a list of sponsors]
Dims. of container: 65 x 53.5 x 2.5cm.
Condition note: Spillages and staining all over container especially front cover.

The portfolio was printed by Sirocco under the supervision of Ives-Sillman.

The paintings and sculpture of American artist Ellsworth Kelly, who came to prominence in the 1950s and '60s, can be described as both abstract and minimalist. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Kelly travelled to France and encounterd the work of artists such as Matisse, Arp and Brancusi, as well Romanesque and Byzantine sculpture and architecture. Such influences, combined with those of the fast-developing Abstract Expressionist movement in the USA itself, shaped the direction of Kelly's own work. His paintings became planes of absolutely flat colour, often on shaped canvases assembled together to make composite works, which, in their total lack of representationalism, could be viewed as almost 'architectural' or sculptural. Usually strictly geometic in construction, his paintings sometimes, as in this print, have a somewhat more organic element, reflecting forms originating in the real world such as architectural detail or shadows.

CIRC.125-1969