Ellsworth Kelly200314MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO / MCASD

1963Red Blue Green

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Red Green Blueis almost the title of a 1963 painting by Ellsworth Kelly. Red Blue Green, a monumental rectangular oil work, considered a crucial fulcrum point in the artist’s career, represents Kelly’s concerns about the tension between the figure and the ground, offering two precisely shaped and balanced red and blue forms set against a strongly contrasting green ground. Working within a strict set of limits, he created a string of similarly grand, powerful works and defined many of the ideas about line, form, and color that still drive his work today.

These works, made from the late 50s to the mid-60s, established the artist’s singular style and his reputation as one of the most innovative abstract painters of the latter half of the 20th century, one who boldly broke with the strictures of