Ellsworth Kelly

Laura Carpenter Fine Art, Santa Fe
Acquired by the present owner from the above in May 1995

New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Ellsworth Kelly: Weathering Steel Wall Sculpture, January - February 1984, cat. no. 10, illustrated in color
Marseille, Centre d'Art Contemporain,  New York '85, July - August 1985, pp. 62-63, illustrated
Mexico City, Centro Cultural d’Arte Contemporáneo, Leo Castelli y sus artistas: XXX años de promocion del arte contemporaneo, June - October 1987, cat. no. 100, pp. 146 and 277, illustrated in color
Santa Fe, Laura Carpenter Fine Art, Ellsworth Kelly: Paintings & Sculpture, June - July 1992

James Regniato and Todd Eberle, “The Cutting Edge,” Architectural Digest, April 2011, pp. 73-77, illustrated in color

This work is in very good and sound condition overall. There are light striations to the color and patina of the steel. There are some light, scattered surface abrasions throughout.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Ellsworth Kelly’s work resists easy categorization or historization with artistic movements of the past sixty years. Avoiding labels, Kelly has uncompromisingly followed an independent artistic path and created a body of work that can unqualifiedly can be called “timeless.” The subdued lyricism of his works is derived from their connection to both the natural world and our perceptual experiences living within it. To view an Ellsworth Kelly sculpture or painting is to confront the hints of a memory or recollection. As he explained, “When you raise your head to look up at the ceiling … you do not see the ceiling as a square or a rectangle, even though it is, but you see it as a warped shaped or a parallelogram; it really depends more on how you move your head around that tells you that the ceiling is there and what it looks like.” (Charles Wylie, “Ellsworth Kelly in Dallas,” Dallas Museum of Art, 2004, p. 9). Kelly creates universal forms by capturing the essence of spectators’ experiences and displaying what they’ve seen but not recognized.

Presented on the wall like a two-dimensional painting, Untitled quickly reveals itself through its evident materiality as physical object projecting into space towards the viewer. Writing to John Cage in 1950, Kelly stated that pictures “should be the wall – even better—on the outside wall—of large buildings.’” Indeed, the steel of Untitled is the near-literal manifestation of Kelly’s polemic to Cage. More to the point, Untitled’s tactile weight and precarious angling engage the wall (even if only to bring its durability into question), while the hard edges and sharp angles of the sheet drive focus down to the point suspended above the ground like a Damoclean sword. The gentle curve of the upper right edge, which varies drastically in appearance depending on the viewer’s position, both softens the shape as well as provides direction for the visual energy straight edges. As a result, the overall composition coheres into a modern-day Malevich that similarly exemplifies “the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts.”

Color, always a fundamental element in Kelly’s work, has been supplemented in Untitled with the tactility and implied temporality of the umber rust adhered to the steel sheet. This weathering effectively dissolves the border between exterior and interior, and paradoxically takes on a woody cast that infuses the sheet with an organic earthiness.