Curve Seen from a Highway, Austerlitz, Ellsworth Kelly

Artwork by Ellsworth Kelly, , dated 1970

Curve Seen from a Highway, Austerlitz, 1970
Gelatin silver print
Image 8½ × 12¾ inches; 22 × 32 cm
Sheet 11 × 14 inches; 28 × 36 cm
Stamped (verso): Printed under the supervision of the artist
Signed by Jack Shear, the executor of the Kelly estate, and numbered in ink (verso): 5/6

Exhibited

Ridgefield, CT, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, A Second Talent: Painters and Sculptors Who Are Also Photographers, September 22 – December 29, 1985. Traveled to New York, Baruch College Gallery, February 6 – March 14, 1986 (another example exhibited)

Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Ellsworth Kelly: The Process of Seeing, October 1, 1994 – February 5, 1995 (another example exhibited)

Munich, Haus der Kunst, Ellsworth Kelly Black & White, October 7, 2011 – January 22, 2012. Traveled to Wiesbaden, Germany, Museum Wiesbaden, March 1 – June 24, 2012 (another example exhibited)

New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Ellsworth Kelly Photographs, February 26 – April 30, 2016 (another example exhibited)

Literature

Diane Waldman. Ellsworth Kelly: Drawings, Collages, Prints. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1971, fig. 22, p. 33, ill. (as Curve seen from a highway, New York State)

Ellsworth Kelly, Barbara Rose, and Edy de Wilde. Ellsworth Kelly: Schilderijen en Beelden 1963–1979. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1979, fig. 7, pp. 6–7, ill.

Barbara Rose. Ellsworth Kelly: Peintures et Sculptures 1968–1979. Paris: Museum National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980, fig. 7, pp. 10–11, ill.

Barbara Rose, and Katharina Schmidt. Ellsworth Kelly: Gemälde und Skulpturen 1966–1979. Baden-Baden, Germany: Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1980, fig. 7, p. 18, ill.

David Shapiro. “Ellsworth Kelly: Puretés et dangers.” Art Press (Paris), no. 38, June 1980, pp. 8–9

David Shapiro. “Ellsworth Kelly: Puretés et dangers.” Translated by Catherine Ferbos and Catherine Thieck. New York Arts Journal (New York), no. 19, September 1980, pp. 23–24

A Second Talent: Painters and Sculptors Who Are Also Photographers. Ridgefield, CT: The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 1985

Rini Dippel. Ellsworth Kelly: Blue Curve. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1985, p. 161, ill.

Yve-Alain Bois. Ellsworth Kelly: Spencertown. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery; London: Anthony d’Offay, 1994, front cover, ill.

Jacqueline Brody. "Museum & Gallery Catalogues: Anthony D'Offay Gallery – Ellsworth Kelly Spencertown." The Print Collector's Newsletter, 25, no. 5, November/December 1994, p. 190

Bryan Robertson. "Ellsworth Kelly."Modern Painters, Winter 1996, p. 16, ill.

Diane Waldman. Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1996, cat. no. 162, pp. 48, 333

Michael Duncan. “Sketching with a Camera.” What’s the Buzz, February 1997, p. 20, ill.

Briony Fer, Thomas Kellein, Simon Maurer, and David Rimanelli. "Ellsworth Kelly." Parkett 56, 1999, p. 46, ill.

Madeleine Grynsztejn and Julian Myers. Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, fig. 25, p. 76, ill.

Francesca Picchi, ed. “Is that the way it is, Mr. Kelly? Post-Interview Ramblings.” domus 931, January 14, 2010

Maria Guiseppina di Monte. Ellsworth Kelly - La forma è il contenuto. Rome: De Luca Editori d'Arte, 2010, fig. 16, p. 67, ill.

Ulrich Wilmes, ed. Ellsworth Kelly: Black & White. Munich: Haus der Kunst; Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2011, cat. no. 80, p. 172, ill.

Tricia Y. Paik, Gavin Delahunty, Gary Garrels, Richard Shiff, and Robert Storr. Ellsworth Kelly. London and New York: Phaidon, 2015, fig. 125, p. 199, ill.

Ellsworth Kelly. Ellsworth Kelly Photographs. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery; New York: Aperture, 2016, p. 39, ill.

“Composed of selected elements of the manmade environment that are almost indecipherable at first glance, Kelly’s black and white photographs combine an austere, reductive composition with richness of perceptual detail. Some of the images derive their impact from carefully controlled references to qualities of the ordinary snapshot: the snapshot’s fortuitous relationships or inconsequentiality, for instance.”

—Linda Nochlin, 1997

<p><em>Untitled</em>, 2004<br />Painted stainless steel<br />Private collection</p> — *Untitled*, 2004
Painted stainless steel
Private collection

All the forms in Kelly’s precise yet wide-ranging practice stem from everyday subjects he happened upon in the world around him, leading Richard Shiff to refer to Kelly’s art as “fragments of visual experience.” A curve, for example, could originate in a variety of sources, including a landscape, a bridge, a leaf, or the human body. Once Kelly had worked out the particulars of a specific form, he might render it in any number of formats and mediums, from a small collage or photograph to a large sculpture.