Ellsworth Kelly: States of The Rivers
Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center
Jun 29 - Nov 26, 2023
2023 Nyack-PR
With the exhibition, States of The River, Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center is pleased to join the Ellsworth Kelly Studio and other U.S. museums and venues in celebrating the centennial of the birth of Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015), widely regarded as one of the most important painters, sculptors, and printmakers of his time. On Thursday, June 29, the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center, Nyack, NY, will unveil the exhibition, Ellsworth Kelly: States of the River, featuring nine lithographs by Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) created between 2004 and 2005 and printed at Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles.
The exhibition takes its name from a series of large-scale one color lithographs by Kelly dedicated to the motif of rivers around the world. Printed in black, with white highlights coming forth from the Rives BFK paper surface, eight large scale prints are each titled after a major waterway: the Rhine; Nile; Thames; Amazon; Seine; Yangtze; Mississippi; and Hudson. At the Edward Hopper House Museum, this group is joined by The River, a lithograph measuring just over nine feet in length. The large format gives the images a sweeping presence as well as an equivalency to Kelly’s hallmark clean lines and color field paintings and sculptures.
The River lithographs were influenced by work Kelly created while living in Paris between 1948 and 1954. This formative period in the artistic development of the Newburgh, NY native was marked by a fascination for color and form found in nature and the play of light and shadow on the wavering surface of water. More than 50 years later the ever inquisitive Kelly, then in his eighties, rekindled interest in his earlier Parisian investigations. Beginning with 4 x 6 inch postcards, the idea spawned into eleven related but distinct works, ranging from these one color lithographs to a wall sculpture.
“For the Ellsworth Kelly Centennial Celebration, we thought it was important to feature Kelly’s masterful and sensitively rendered prints within the birthplace and childhood home of another influential and celebrated American artist,” said Edward Hopper House Museum director Kathleen Motes Bennewitz. “Moreover, both artists, working in their own distinct style and manner, mastered printmaking and were equally captivated by rivers and the interaction of light on the water’s surface.”
As a youth, Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was drawn to the banks of the Hudson and enjoyed direct views of the river from his home, as visitors can still do today. In adulthood, the aspiring artist was also fascinated by the Seine in Paris, where he visited three times between 1906 and 1910. Like Kelly, it was in the ‘City of Light’ where Hopper studied the dramatic contrast between light and dark on swirling and hard surfaces and became fascinated with geometric shapes and symbolist themes. Each artist came to distill these most essential features of the natural world into their mature work.
