Ellsworth Kelly’s innovations in the late 1940s and early 1950s fundamentally altered the trajectory of abstract art. His pioneering use of the monochrome canvas and multi-panel formats, his insistence on pure form, and his embrace of chance and repetition became key touchstones in painting’s shift away from 1960s Expressionism.

Phaidon published the definitive book on the artist. It’s authored by Tricia Y. Paik, Florence Finch Abbott Director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She was previously curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and has held positions at the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

By drawing directly from the world around him, Kelly revealed a new language of abstraction. As he later put it: “Everywhere I looked, everything I saw became something to be made, and it had to be made exactly as it was, with nothing added.”

Across more than seventy years, Kelly transformed such observations into paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs whose force and clarity exceeded stylistic boundaries. This beautifully written and richly illustrated volume traces Kelly’s work from his earliest projects in the 1940s through to his final ones in 2015, across nearly 400 pages.

What makes it especially captivating is the way it combines intimacy with deep analytical texts. This is a vital volume for anyone wishing to understand modern Minimalism in its purest form.

–