Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) is one of the masters of American minimalism.

He is collected internationally and renowned for his signature hypnotic shapes realized in bold saturated colors. 

Like many artists who had served in the US military during WWII, Kelly took advantage of the G.I. Bill and moved to Paris in the late 1940s returning to the US in 1954. By the end of the decade, he had established his reputation as part of the new wave of artists rejecting the dominance of abstract expressionism in American art. Kelly was notably included

Kelly was one of the first artists, along with Frank Stella, to use unconventional creatively shaped canvases, contributing to the nascent genre of Minimalism. Similar to Stella, Kelly began to explore printmaking in the 1960s and it became an essential part of his practice. 

"Red Blue" is an early example of Kelly's printmaking and an exemplary artwork that demonstrates the artist's stunning exploration of color, shape, and space.

The screenprint was included in the legendary X X (Ten Works by Ten Painters) portfolio from 1964, which featured works by Frank Stella, Robert Motherwell, and Andy Warhol, among others. Today, the portfolio is considered one of the best representations of both printmaking of the era created by the leading American artists.

This iconic piece is represented in numerous public collections such as The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), and The Tate Modern (London), to name a few.

Kelly's work can be found in every major American permanent collection in addition to the Centre Pompidou (Paris) the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid), Tate Modern (London), and the National Gallery (Ottawa).

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"Red Blue" 

USA, 1964