Orange White

Artist Ellsworth Kelly (American, 1923–2015)

Date1961

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 213.7 x 152.7 cm (84 1/8 x 60 1/8 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Terms

Object number1963.80

Label Text“I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately, everything becomes abstract.” Ellsworth Kelly’s artistic perspective developed independent of the New York scene to which he would return following an extended stay in Paris (1948-1954), where he studied on the G.I. bill (he had served in a camouflage unit in the army). Orange White is one of Ellsworth Kelly’s signature “figure-ground” paintings, which explore the dynamics between background and foreground elements, and between positive and negative spaces through a vocabulary of geometric shapes, curves, arcs, and brilliant color. Although decidedly abstract, Kelly’s paintings often were distilled from real-life observations—plant life, architectural fragments, shadows, even the spaces between things. Because of their defined contours and the elimination of any gestural brushwork, Kelly’s colors read more as object than atmosphere. Here, swollen volumes of orange pigment occupy a canvas that seems barely able to contain them, squeezing the white ground out to the edges and nearly out of the picture. In its extreme clarity, Orange White embodies Kelly’s belief that, “The form of my painting is the content…It was made to exist forever in the present.” ProvenanceBetty Parsons Gallery, New York NY

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