PRESS RELEASE
This will be Kelly’s first show of paintings in Paris in 20 years, since his 1992 exhibitin at the Galeries Nationales du Jeu de Paume which surveyed the early works he made while living in Paris from 1948-54.
The exhibition will include an installation of four 2-panel paintings, made this year, each consisting of a colored curve in relief against a white panel. Installed on the four walls of the gallery they read as a singular, iconic statement in a progressive spectrum of red, yellow, blue and green.
Kelly has often said he takes inspiration fon observing the world around him, distilling to abstraction visual fragments like the shape of a leaf, an architectural vault, the bend of a page or the curve of a body. Throughout his long career Kelly has consistently revisited the curve in his most iconic paintings, drawings and sculputures. Predecessors for the curved reliefs on view here can be found dating back to early collages, reliefs and paintings made during the six years he spent living and working in Paris after World War II.
Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris | May 16 – July 13, 2012.