Exhibition Catalogues

WRITTEN IN FRENCH

On May 31, 2023, Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) would have been 100 years old. From the observation of his direct environment, he redefined abstraction in the second half of the 20th century, taking his refined forms, often with vibrant colors, beyond the expectations of painting and sculpture.

Nearly ten years after his death, his works still exert the same fascination, through their intensity and their balance, the quality of their visual addresses, the spaces they create, their paradoxical sensuality expressed in rigor. The Louis Vuitton Foundation has the chance to bear witness to this on a daily basis thanks to the presence in its auditorium of a lasting installation, one of the artist's very latest creations.

This work offers an introduction and an overview of his work, like the exhibition it accompanies and which is held at the Louis Vuitton Foundation from May 4, 2024 to September 9, 2024. First exhibition in France to address his work with such a broad chronological spectrum, it is composed of more than a hundred works, paintings, drawings, photographs and collages. Like her, this book allows us to fully understand the work accomplished by the artist. His work is reproduced here accompanied by studies of those familiar with his work (Jean-Pierre Criqui, Suzanne Hudson) or contributions on lesser known aspects (Corey Keller on photography, Alex da Corte on freedom in his work, Sarah Rogers on its reception in the Middle East, Peter Eleey on the memorial dimension). It also includes a richly illustrated chronology which looks back in particular on Kelly's decisive stay in France in the immediate post-war period, his contribution to the American scene at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. And further downstream, it follows the development and the complex ramifications of a work addressing all scales of perception, from the line on a sheet, to the intervention in architectural space.

Exhibition Ellsworth Kelly. Shapes and Colors, 1949-2015 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton from May 4 to September 9, 2024.

French
306 pages

Editions Hazan