Ellsworth Kelly at the Rijksmuseum

Ellsworth Kelly at the Rijksmuseum

Ellsworth Kelly is one of the most important American artists of the second half of the twentieth century. His abstract work was inspired by the ‘things he saw’. He transformed his observations into simple, clear-cut surfaces and forms, thereby barely distinguishing between painting and sculpture as art forms. ‘In sculpture, the work itself is the form and the ground is the space around it. In painting, the form and the ground have always shared the same surface’, as Kelly put it himself. The artist’s use of intense, counterpoised colors makes each of his sculptures – whether in bronze, steel or wood – a crystal-clear visual statement. This summer Ellsworth Kelly’s sharply defined sculptures loom large in the green spaces of the Rijksmuseum Gardens