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Asiatic Day Flower 1969 20th Century 29 7/8 in. x 22 in. (75.88 cm x 55.88 cm) Ellsworth Kelly (Newburgh, New York, 1923 - ) Object Type: Drawing Medium and Support: pencil on paper Credit Line: Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection: Purchase, Tabriz Fund and Museum Purchase Plan of the NEA. 1981.015 Accession Number: 1981.015 Comments: In Spring 1949, while a student at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Kelly brought a potted hyacinth to his studio which became a subject for his drawing.  From that time onward he has filled notebooks with flower drawings.  Plant drawings on large sheets of rag paper began to appear in exhibitions from 1957.  These drawings demonstrate an impersonal observation of forms, Kelly's regard for the line drawings of Arp, Brancusi and Matisse, and his ability to exploit the tension between flat translations of three-dimensional forms through the precision of the encompassing line.  There is no shading, no fattening or special emphasis to his line.  The means are austerely economical.  He is concerned with horticultural accuracy, an aesthetic ordering of the shapes on the page and the tensions between the line and the shape it describes--the facts.  The plant drawings are related to Kelly's keen abilities in observation, his meticulous rendering of objective reality, and his sense of style.  The plant drawings have become the chamber music of his otherwise public wall paintings and sculpture.

Keywords:

• drawing
• American
• pencil

Portfolio List
This object is a member of the following portfolios (click any portfolio name to view all objects in that portfolio):

• Drawing: Still-life
• Masterworks: Drawing
• Twentieth Century American Drawings

Keywords:

• Artist:North American:American
• Class:Fine Arts:drawing
• Class:Fine Arts:drawing:pencil

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