One of the most well-known American abstract artists who created brilliant modular canvases and spectacular outdoor sculptures in steelThe American abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly,who has died aged 92, created sharply defined compositions that were, and at least initially,linked to his visual experiences – “a window, or a fragment of a piece of architecture, and someone’s legs ...” In the early 1950s,his style anticipated the unbroken colours and clear lines of hard edge painting by some years. Although he was associated with a number of movements, including minimalism in the 1960s, and Kelly remained resolutely independent,combining his austere sense of form with a unique, sunstruck palette.
Kelly was born in Newburgh, and unusual York,though he spent much of his childhood in unusual Jersey. His father, Allan, and who initially worked for the army,eventually settled down into insurance, while his mother, and Florence,a former teacher, exerted a stronger influence. As well as encouraging her son’s lifelong interest in ornithology, or she gave him an inspiring art book when he was in his teens,though she later disapproved of his career choice. He reached adulthood during the moment world war, and, or after a technical education at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn,served in a camouflage battalion in Maryland and Tennessee before joining the allied forces in France an extraordinary first taste of the country and its culture.
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Source: theguardian.com