Ellsworth Kelly died: US painter in hard-edge style – SPIEGEL ONLINE

A few weeks before his death, went to a reporter of the British “Guardian” the artist Ellsworth Kelly at his studio in Spencertown in New York State. He was still full of plans, in particular of a non-denominational chapel employed draft him in their design, the bright colors and geometric shapes that characterized his work again found.

The refuge in Spencertown had Kelly based in the seventies, where he lived with his partner, photographer Jack Shear, two hours drive north of the hustle and bustle of the art metropolis of New York, was celebrated in the Ellsworth Kelly for his abstract painting and Sculpture.

At the Pratt Institute in New York had born in 1923 Kelly studied art, but after only three semesters, he announced in 1943 volunteered to fight in World War II, where he was part of a deception unit of the US Army. After a few semesters in Boston Ellsworth Kelly in 1948 returned to Europe – he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, met famous artists such as Picasso or Miró and was looking for his own artistic form.

With its “Window”, rectangular shapes in white and gray, he made 1949 a decisive step towards abstraction, which should characterize his work as a result. While Ellsworth Kelly was in the metropolis of the Old Europe, boomed in the US Abstract Expressionism to the Kelly although always kept a critical distance, in the context of his work but soon won high reputation. . Kelly moved to New York, and in 1959 he exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art

One of the styles, with Ellsworth Kelly was associated, the so-called Hard was Edge: abstract representations with clean lines and a few, unmixed, heavily accented colors. Another genre, for his work an important example emits the color field painting. Kelly painted but also created sculptures.

Ellsworth Kelly has been rewarded with numerous awards for his work, including 2000, the Praemium Imperiale, one of the world’s highest honors in the field of art. 2013 awarded him Barack Obama, the National Medal of Arts of the United States. In Germany, his work has been appreciated and in several exhibitions presented: The “world” called Kelly “one of the last heroes of postwar modernism” and let him in 2011 make a newspaper edition

The “Guardian” -Reporterin that. visited him in the fall, Ellsworth Kelly said he would like to live another 15 years – but that was not granted to him, what since 2010 suffering from a cardiopulmonary insufficiency artists naturally guessed. As the “New York Times” reported on Monday, Kelly died on Sunday at his home in Spencertown in New York. He was 92 years old.