Red-Orange (Rouge-Orange) from Suite of Twenty-Seven Color Lithographs

Although Ellsworth Kelly has been associated with Minimalism and Color Field painting, his artistic development occurred independently of these influences in Paris, where he studied on the G.I. bill after serving in World War II. Kelly's paintings and sculptures appear to be hard-edged abstractions, but they are, in fact, inspired by organic and architectural forms, and his work has long included naturalistic outline drawings of foliage and flowers. Unlike the Abstract Expressionists who preceded him, Kelly is an artist whose work is premeditated and planned, and he strives for flat, unmodulated areas of saturated color and the elimination of his own personal mark, qualities visible in the earl...