I’ve recently revisited Ellsworth Kelly. When he was a child living in NJ in the 1930s, he and his grandmother spent much time bird-watching. It is said that this greatly informed his sense of color and form. He was a loner as a kid with a slight stutter and gradually made his way to Brooklyn to study at Pratt Institute before enlisting in WWII. After returning to the NY, his work was considered drastically different than his peers; however, he had his first show at Betty Parsons Gallery (“the den mother of modern Abstract Expressionism”) in 1957. That exhibit was followed with painting selected for the Whitney’s “Young America 1957” in which he showed a painting consisting of 3 panels, something had never been done before. Today he lives in Spensertown NY and is 88 years old.
