Colored Paper Image XXI (Orange/Blue/Black/Green/Brown)
1976/1977
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
colored and pressed paper pulp
Dimensions
sheet (irregular): 81.9 x 80.01 cm (32 1/4 x 31 1/2 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Professional Art Group I
Accession Number
1980.72.4
Art Historical Context
Ellsworth Kelly's *Colored Paper Image XXI (/Blue/Black/G/Brown)*, created between 1976 and 1977, exemplifies the artist's lifelong fascination with pure color and form. A pioneering figure in Color Field painting and hard-edge abstraction, Kelly strips art to its essentials—bold, flat shapes and vibrant hues—often evoking the geometry of nature and architecture. This work, measuring about 32¼ x 31½ inches with an irregular sheet edge, belongs to his innovative Colored Paper Image series, produced at the Dieu Donné Papermill in New York. The medium—colored and pressed paper pulp—marks a bold ...
About the Artist
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) was a pioneering American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose career reshaped abstract art through precise geometry, bold color, and innovative forms. Born in Newburgh, New York, as the second of three sons to an insurance executive father and schoolteacher mother, Kelly developed an early fascination with nature's patterns, sparked by his paternal grandmother's int...