Ellsworth Kelly Plant Drawings

www.metmuseum.org

One of the foremost artists of our day, Ellsworth Kelly may be best known for his rigorous abstract painting. However, Kelly has made figurative drawings throughout his career, and has created an extraordinary body of work that now spans six decades. Ellsworth Kelly Plant Drawings—at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 5 through September 3, 2012—will be the first major museum exhibition dedicated exclusively to the artist’s drawings of plants, flowers, and leaves. The selection of approximately 75 drawings begins in 1948 during Kelly’s early sojourn in Paris and continues throughout his travels to his most recent work made in upstate New York. The exhibition will include loans from major public and private collections. Ranging from seaweed suspended in his studio, to a flower discovered on the road side, to a single banana leaf examined at close range, Kelly’s renderings of plants—he likens them to portraits—are precisely observed studies of forms in nature. They are also steeped in memory and personal experience. “The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me,” the artist once said, “is to see something, and then to translate how I see it.” Although Kelly occasionally introduces brushed color in his exquisite depictions of blossoms, leaves, or fruit, he generally favors contour drawing in graphite or ink. IMAGE: Ellsworth Kelly (American, b. 1923) Wild Grape, 1961. Watercolor on paper 22 1/8 x 28 1/2 in. Private collection. © Ellsworth Kelly. Photograph Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art