Matthew Marks Gallery

These final paintings, made in the months leading up to Kelly’s death in December 2015, further develop the non-compositional strategies he pioneered in the late 1940s and pursued throughout his life, including monochrome paintings, shaped canvases, and joined panels. As he stated around the time he began these works, “My later paintings have all the early paintings inside them.”

In addition to Kelly’s last ten paintings, the book includes sixteen photographs by Jack Shear of Kelly’s studio as he left it on his final day of painting — a poignant record of his seven-decade advancement of a singular artistic vision.