EXHIBITION OF EARLY DRAWINGS BY ELLSWORTH KELLY SHOWCASES THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS MAJOR AMERICAN ARTIST

Exhibition To Tour To Atlanta, Chicago, Switzerland and Germany

Cambridge, MA - February 19, 1999 - Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948-1955 features 220 drawings and collages from the formative years that Kelly spent as a young artist in France, many of which have never before been exhibited. The exhibition opens March 6, 1999 at the Harvard University Art Museums before touring nationally and internationally.

The works showcased in Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948 - 1955 capture the moment when Kelly worked out his highly personal abstract aesthetic. During this period, Kelly progressively evolved four strategies for making art - the transfer, chance, the modular grid, and the monochrome panel - in order to develop an alternative to traditional composing and to find a style at once radically inventive and stubbornly impersonal. Together, the works present a private, almost diaristic voyage into the thought-process of a developing artist, revealing that the simplicity in his art is achieved through a patient and arduous labor of elimination and refinement.

This pioneering exhibition is curated by Yve-Alain Bois, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard and is organized by the Art Museums and the Kunstmuseum Winterthur. The exhibition is made possible with support from the Alexander S., Robert L. and Bruce A. Beal Exhibition Fund, the Douglas Cramer Foundation, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, the Gürel Student Exhibition Fund and Emily Rauh Pulitzer.

Many critics believe that the 1948-1955 period is the ultimate source of all of Kelly's later work. In this richly experimental time, Kelly evolved a vocabulary of forms and an arsenal of strategies he would return to again and again in later years. A special section of the exhibition will be devoted to Line Form Color, a set of forty drawings and collages which highlight this artistic exploration and evolution. Kelly completed the set in 1951 for a book project that was never realized, and, in conjunction with the exhibition, Kelly has completed the book Line Form Color.

A fully-illustrated scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition, written by Yve-Alain Bois and published by the Harvard University Art Museums and the Kunstmuseum Winterthur. Professor Bois's essay traces the formal and theoretical development of the works and illuminates their importance in Kelly's uvre. A slipcase edition of Line Form Color published by the Harvard University Art Museums, with an essay by associate curator Harry Cooper, will also accompany the exhibition. Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948 - 1955

Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948-1955 will be presented in two parts at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum and the Fogg Art Museum. The exhibition will remain on view through May 16, before touring to the High Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kunstmuseum Winterthur (Winterthur, Switzerland), the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Munich, Germany), and the Kunstmuseum Bonn. Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948-1955

The Harvard University Art Museums consist of the Fogg Art Museum (founded in 1891, opened in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (founded in 1902, now housed in Werner Otto Hall), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (opened in 1985). The Straus Center for Conservation is located in the Fogg. Through their collections, the Art Museums serve Harvard University as a catalyst for instruction and scholarship, as a training ground for future academic art historians and museum professionals, and as a general resource for the greater Boston area and all parts of the world.

The collections of the Art Museums consist of more than 150,000 objects in all media, with works ranging from antiquity to the present and from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Developed with an emphasis on their value for teaching and research, the collections comprise a unique resource in terms of breadth and quality, and are one of the finest university art collections in the world.

The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and to all on Saturday mornings and all day on Wednesdays. For tour and other information, please call (617) 496-8576. The Harvard University Art Museums is supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.