When Henri Matissein a gesture that not even he could explain, invaded the canvas in which he portrayed his workshop in 1911 in red, Ellsworth Kelly had not yet been born on the other side of the Atlantic. Together and separately, the color revolutions that both represent have crossed paths in Paris, at the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
After the success of the retrospective dedicated to Mark Rothkowhich had a record number of 852,000 visitors during the autumn-winter season, the center for contemporary art of the French fashion brand – located in an imposing building Frank Gehry in the Bois de Boulogne (northwest of Paris) – gives way to not one, but two exhibitions that will last throughout the Olympic summer.
The first – although not necessarily in that order of importance – pays tribute to the American sculptor and abstract painter Ellsworth Kelly (Newburgh, 1923-New York, 2015) as part of the commemorations of the centenary of his birth, which took place on May 31 of last year.
Graduated Ellsworth Kelly. Shapes and colors 1949-2015 and premiered first in the United States at the Glenstone Museum (Potomac, United States), the exhibition is also the first retrospective of his work ever held in Paris, a place that forever changed his artistic outlook between 1948 and 1954.
“When he returned to the United States they told him that his work was too European and in Europe they told him ‘your work is too American,’” explains the photographer. Jack Shearwidower of the artist and president of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation.
“He was never part of a group,” he adds, “he was always an individual artist in a very particular way, just like Gaudi “He is a singular architect.”
Ellsworth Kelly He redefined abstraction in the second half of the 20th century with works of clean shapes, spaces and reliefs that, at the same time, tune in with the world around them in a way that never ceases to generate fascination.
“He liked the idea of watching. He has a quote that says that if you turn off your mind and look only with your eyes, everything becomes abstract,” he details. shear.
Many of the hundred paintings, sculptures, photographs and collages that make up the retrospective come from the Glenstone Museum, a center specialized in contemporary art after the Second World War that privileges artists who, such as Kelly“they changed the paradigm of art history,” in the words of its Director of Collections, Nora Cafritz.
“I was doing radical work at a time when art, in the United States, was more into a kind of gestural painting of passionate action. “His minimalist style and his style of color painting are very, very different from what was seen in the fifties, sixties and seventies,” he highlights. Cafritz.
The exhibition, which will later travel to Doha, also includes the last commission completed by Kelly before dying: his intervention in the auditorium of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris that also exemplifies the artist’s interest in architecture.
The colors of Ellsworth Kelly You will not be alone at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, which proposes to end the tour with an independent exhibition dedicated to another revolutionary work: The red workshop from French Henri Matisse (1869-1954).
“I think it will be a surprise for everyone. “People will come for Matisse and have the bonus of seeing Ellsworth’s work,” he jokes. shear.
With the support of the MoMA in New York and the SMK in Copenhagen, the visitor will be able to immerse themselves in this work that originally portrayed the workshop of Matisse in Issy-les-Moulineaux (outskirts of Paris), at the request of the Russian patron Sergei Chtchoukineand that the modern painter, in a revolutionary gesture that he himself admitted he did not fully understand, decided to cover in red.
“Chtchoukine had commissioned very radical paintings of Matisse over the years, but when he saw the playback of The red studio said ‘no, thank you’ (…) It took decades for people to be prepared to understand it, even Matisse It took years to reconcile,” he explained to EFE Dorthe AagesenSMK commissioner.
“There was a dramatic risk that this image – which was initially a more realistic view of his workspace – would be ruined in the experiment,” he adds, for his part. Ann Temkinits MoMA counterpart.
To understand it better and claim its place in art history, The red workshop is reunited in Paris with the works that appear portrayed inside (because in 1911 they were in Issy-les-Moulineaux with Matisse), as Nude with white scarf (1909) or The Young Sailor II (1906).
Source: EFE
[Fotos: prensa Fundación Louis Vuitton]
