Featuring one hundred figurative works on paper by Ellsworth Kelly, (1923-2015), this volume shows a new side of an artist best known for the abstract. These casual depictions of friends and expressive self-portraits—all rarely or never previously shown or published—span Kelly's entire career, from the mid-1940s to the early 2000s. Throughout his life, Kelly made portraits as a means of keeping her hand skilled at drawing, providing a place to test ideas, refine a bold use of line, and interrogate the space between naturalism and abstraction.
These works also capture Kelly's social milieu, which intersected with other creative circles and queer communities. He painstakingly recorded how his own appearance changed over time, once describing some of these sketches by saying, "I use myself to draw." The accompanying critical essays show the ways in which such intimate engagement was fundamental to Kelly's practice, and situate this important aspect of his work within the artist's wider oeuvre.
Dimensions: 20 x 25.5 cm
Pages: 190, hardback
Language: English
Authors: (ed.) Kevin Salatino and Emily Vokt Ziemba.
Publisher: Yale University Press