Floor 5: Ellsworth Kelly North: QR Code 512
Overview
Objects
5 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Label Text
1958
Oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and promised gift of Helen and Charles Schwab
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1999
It takes a moment for the eye to register the slight irregularity of the black shape within the white rectangle of Wall. Depending on the angle from which the painting is viewed, its white border almost disappears, and the black suggests an askew window or door. The mysterious, restrained play of dark form against white painted background produces a subtly warped sense of space and introduces a tension between Wall and the gallery wall on which it hangs.
Visual Description
A rectangular painting measuring around 4.5 feet tall is dominated by a dense, uniform black rectangle that fills most of the surface. The black area is bordered by a slim white margin on the left, right, and top, while the bottom margin becomes a noticeably deeper white band, making the composition resemble an unexposed instant photograph with its characteristic thicker lower border. The black shape reads as matte and opaque, and is set at a barely-noticeable slight slant towards the bottom right within the white rectangle.
Label Text
1974
Aluminum
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1994
This work is part of a group of vertical pieces in aluminum, wood, and stainless or weathering steel that Kelly began making in the mid-1970s. He frequently revisited a given form in varying colors, materials, and scales, exploring the radically different feeling that each version can bring to the same simple shape. The proportions of all the Curve sculptures are mathematically precise. The arcing outer edges of Curve IX are segments of a circle with a radius of 720 inches.
Visual Description
A large aluminum form about 10 ft tall, 1.75 ft wide, and nearly 1 inch thick stands upright as a matte light-gray slab with softly curving sides. The silhouette is an elongated vertical panel that subtly pinches inward around the middle, then broadens again toward the top and bottom. The top edge appears nearly straight and slightly trapezoidal, while the bottom edge widens into a small, flat foot that meets the ground plane. The surface is smooth and uniform, with faint tonal shifts from lighting. Near the lower right corner at the base, two small circular holes (or fasteners) are visible on the foot plate.
Label Text
1963
Painted aluminum
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and promised gift of Helen and Charles Schwab
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1999
Visual Description
A painting around 7 feet tall features a vivid cobalt-blue rectangularfield with a single matte-black form mounted over it. The blue panel reads as a crisp, flat plane with clean edges, filling most of the composition and establishing a saturated, uniform background. Centered over the blue panel is a tall, narrow black element that runs vertically. It is connected to the blue element with five rows of rounded pegs, which extend about six inches from the blue panel. It has a gentle, sinuous curve that bows slightly as it descends, giving the rigid metal a ribbon-like presence. The black strip starts at the top edge of the blue panel, poking out slightly over the edge, and continues downward past the bottom edge, ending in a slanted, trapezoid-like tip that juts outward into the white wall area below. Subtle shadows along the black element’s edges emphasize its three-dimensional separation from the blue surface.
Label Text
1962
Oil on canvas
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1996
Visual Description
An oil-on-canvas painting, about 7 × 5.5 ft, shows a single large red shape set against an unbroken white ground. The red form sits slightly off-center, tilted diagonally, with jagged, uneven edges. Two elongated, tapered white openings cut through the red mass near the right half of the composition: one higher and gently arcing, the other lower and longer, both narrowing to sharp points toward the right edge. The red paint appears smooth and uniform, with subtle tonal variation from brushwork, while the surrounding white margin remains clean and unmarked.
Label Text
2001
Oil on canvas
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2001
On an overcast day in New York, Kelly was struck by the sight of two red construction flags flapping together in the wind, and later translated that momentary perception into this artwork. Unlike many of Kelly’s shaped paintings, Red on Red is composed of two standard square canvases. By combining and overlapping the panels, however, the artist created an irregular form that pushes into real space. A similar merging of painting and sculpture is evident in Black over Blue (1963), on the opposite wall.
Visual Description
A oil-on-canvas work about 7 feet tall presents two overlapping, nearly square panels painted in an orange-red. The upper panel sits slightly up and to the left, while the lower panel is positioned down and to the right, so their forms intersect in a broad, clean-edged overlap near the center. The edges are sharply defined and the planes read as flat, uniform fields. The strong, saturated red-orange dominates the composition, and the offset alignment creates a stepped silhouette with visible margins where the rear canvas extends beyond the front on the top and left, and where the front canvas projects beyond the rear on the right and bottom.