Release Date: March 25, 2003
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART INSTALLS ELLSWORTH KELLY'S COLOR PANELS FOR A LARGE WALL IN EAST BUILDING ATRIUM
Washington, DC--The National Gallery of Art is installing Ellsworth Kelly's Color Panels for a Large Wall (1978) in the atrium of the East Building on the occasion of the building's 25th anniversary year. The work is on a two-year loan from one of America's most prominent post-World War II artists.
The spectacular Color Panels for a Large Wall was created and installed in 1978 as a commission for the Central Trust Company, a bank in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1992, the building changed hands, and after a brief period at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the work returned to Kelly's possession. The painting consists of 18 rectangular monochrome canvases--with two to three variations on each of the six primary and secondary hues, and two panels in black. The original configuration consisted of two horizontal rows of nine panels, an arrangement that was suited to the bank's 140-foot friezelike wall. For the National Gallery, the work has been reconfigured by the artist into a grid: three rows of six panels each. Kelly believes that this incarnation of the piece is preferable to the original. The work will replace the large tapestry Woman (1977, after Joan Miró, woven by Josep Royo), which was commissioned for the East Building and has been on view intermittently since the building opened in 1978.
Three of Kelly's works make reference to a large wall. In addition to the present work, these include Colors for a Large Wall, a 64-panel work (8 x 8 feet) from 1951, and Sculpture for a Large Wall, a 104-panel work (approximately 11 x 65 feet) from 1957, both in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Sculpture for a Large Wall was originally created for the lobby of the Transportation Building in Philadelphia's Penn Plaza. The present configuration of Color Panels for a Large Wall (measuring 54 x 90 feet) is one of Kelly's largest works.
Color Panels incorporates essential aspects of Kelly's classic work, including a composition dependent on intuitive yet highly precise balances of shape, space, and pure color. The development of the multipanel paintings in which the panels become the form and the wall becomes the ground, began during his years in Paris from 1948-1954.
In 1992 the National Gallery of Art presented the exhibition, Ellsworth Kelly: The French Years, 1948-1954. Kelly is prominently featured in the collection of Robert and Jane Meyerhoff, which is promised to the Gallery and was shown here in 1996. Kelly has given (partial and promised) two important works to the Gallery: the painting Tiger from 1953 and an untitled bronze sculpture from 1998. In addition, the Gallery's collection includes paintings from 1976 and 1997, the outdoor sculpture Stele II from 1973, two drawings, and more than 200 prints.
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