Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini: An Exploration of Color
Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl is pleased to present Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini: An Exploration of Color. The
exhibition opens Wednesday, September 6, with a reception during New York’s Print Week on Friday, October 27
from 6 to 9 pm. The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, November 11, and is generously facilitated by loans
from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation.
This exhibition celebrates the centennial of Ellsworth Kelly, acclaimed painter, sculptor and masterful printmaker. Kelly
began collaborating with the Los Angeles based print publisher Gemini G.E.L. in 1970, and in 44 years he created
over 300 prints and editioned sculptures with Gemini. Through his work, Kelly taught his audience how to look, how to
really look, to see things in daily existence that are often overlooked or unobserved — the shapes and colors of natural
and manmade things that are a part of everyday life.
Kelly was a committed printmaker, in part because it often gave him permission to explore aspects of his creativity
with considerably different approaches than in his paintings and sculptures. In his prints, Kelly publicly shared his interest
in portraiture as well as gesture, all the while dedicated to his career-long emphasis on the marriage between pure
form and color.
Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini: An Exploration of Color examines the finesse and subtlety with which Kelly used his Gemini
collaborations to explore single-color variations. The exhibition is inspired by the observation of Kelly in the Gemini
artist studio by Gemini co-founder Sidney Felsen: "Ellsworth stood in the lithography studio, motionless, staring at a wall of 12 or 15 yellow “draw-downs,”
which are pure ink samples, straight out of the can. This must have gone on for nearly 15 to 20 minutes.
Finally, he walked away and I asked, “Ellsworth, what was that all about?” Ellsworth said without hesitation,
“Well, there’s a thousand yellows and I want to be sure I’ve chosen the right one.”
If Kelly was obsessed with choosing the right yellow, that same process undoubtedly applied to his other color selections.
This centennial exhibition considers where the emphasis in Kelly’s single-color printmaking endeavors is found—namely
in red, yellow, blue and green. The works on view compare and contrast the variations in these colors in a variety of
formal presentations.
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exhibition opens Wednesday, September 6, with a reception during New York’s Print Week on Friday, October 27
from 6 to 9 pm. The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, November 11, and is generously facilitated by loans
from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation.
This exhibition celebrates the centennial of Ellsworth Kelly, acclaimed painter, sculptor and masterful printmaker. Kelly
began collaborating with the Los Angeles based print publisher Gemini G.E.L. in 1970, and in 44 years he created
over 300 prints and editioned sculptures with Gemini. Through his work, Kelly taught his audience how to look, how to
really look, to see things in daily existence that are often overlooked or unobserved — the shapes and colors of natural
and manmade things that are a part of everyday life.
Kelly was a committed printmaker, in part because it often gave him permission to explore aspects of his creativity
with considerably different approaches than in his paintings and sculptures. In his prints, Kelly publicly shared his interest
in portraiture as well as gesture, all the while dedicated to his career-long emphasis on the marriage between pure
form and color.
Ellsworth Kelly at Gemini: An Exploration of Color examines the finesse and subtlety with which Kelly used his Gemini
collaborations to explore single-color variations. The exhibition is inspired by the observation of Kelly in the Gemini
artist studio by Gemini co-founder Sidney Felsen: "Ellsworth stood in the lithography studio, motionless, staring at a wall of 12 or 15 yellow “draw-downs,”
which are pure ink samples, straight out of the can. This must have gone on for nearly 15 to 20 minutes.
Finally, he walked away and I asked, “Ellsworth, what was that all about?” Ellsworth said without hesitation,
“Well, there’s a thousand yellows and I want to be sure I’ve chosen the right one.”
If Kelly was obsessed with choosing the right yellow, that same process undoubtedly applied to his other color selections.
This centennial exhibition considers where the emphasis in Kelly’s single-color printmaking endeavors is found—namely
in red, yellow, blue and green. The works on view compare and contrast the variations in these colors in a variety of
formal presentations.
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