part #1. check out the beautiful shapes of,

ELLSWORTH KELLY
b. 1923, Newburgh, New York  























ABOUT

Ellsworth Kelly 
b. 1923, Newburgh, New York  

Ellsworth Kelly studied at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from 1941 to 1943. After military service from 1943 to 1945, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1946 to 1948. In 1949, Kelly went to France and enrolled at the École des beaux-arts, Paris, under the GI Bill, although he attended classes infrequently. In France, he discovered Romanesque art and architecture as well as Byzantine art. He was also introduced to Surrealism and Neo-Plasticism, which led him to experiment with automatic drawing and geometric abstraction. In his work Kelly abstracts the forms in his paintings from observations of the real world, such as shadows cast by trees or the spaces between architectural elements.  In 1950, Kelly met Jean Arp and that same year began to make shaped-wood reliefs and collages in which elements were arranged according to the laws of chance. He soon began to make paintings in separate panels that could be recombined to produce alternate compositions, as well as multipanel paintings in which each canvas is painted a single color. During the 1950s, he traveled throughout France, where he met Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Alberto Magnelli, Francis Picabia, and Georges Vantongerloo, among other artists.  







Above, at the Guggenheim Museum








His first solo show took place at the Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre, Paris, in 1951.  Kelly returned to the United States in 1954, living first in a studio apartment on Broad Street, New York, and then at Coenties Slip in lower Manhattan, where his neighbors would through the years include Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, Fred Mitchell, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. Kelly continued to develop and expand the vocabulary of painting, exploring issues of form and ground with his flatly painted canvases. His first solo show in New York was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, and three years later he was included in 16 Americans at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. In 1958, he also began to make freestanding sculptures. In 1959, art historian Jules Langsner termed the current of American geometric abstraction "Hard-edge painting," connoting the shaped panels of bright color and rigid form created by Kelly and his contemporaries. 




 At Yale University Gallery







Kelly moved out of Manhattan in 1970 and set up a studio in Chatham and a home in nearby Spencertown, New York, where he currently lives and works.  Kelly's first retrospective was held at MoMA in 1973. The following year, he began an ongoing series of totemic sculptures in steel and aluminum. He traveled throughout Spain, Italy, and France in 1977, the same year that his work was included in Documenta in Kassel, West Germany. He has executed many public commissions, including a mural for UNESCO in Paris (1969), a sculpture for the city of Barcelona (1978), and a memorial for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. (1993). Kelly's extensive work has been recognized in numerous retrospectives, including a sculpture exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1982); an exhibition of works on paper and a show of his print works that traveled extensively in the United States and Canada (1987–88); and a career retrospective organized by the Guggenheim Museum (1996), which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Tate Gallery, London; and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Since then, solo exhibitions of Kelly's work have been mounted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1998); Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1999); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2007); and MoMA (2007).

*SPECIAL THANKS TO THE GUGGENHEIM 






















E.K. in his studio





E.K. in his studio







Kelly and friends*



































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you just saw the brilliant works of :


ELLSWORTH KELLY





A visit with the charmed partnership of an illustrator & fashion designer. Check out their eclectic Manhattan loft overlooking the empire state building .

 RUBEN & ISABEL TOLEDO


 





Ruben & Isabel











ABOUT/ ruben


Ruben Toledo was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1961 and is a painter, sculptor, illustrator and fashion chronicler in one. He lives in New York with his wife and creative alter ego, fashion designer Isabel Toledo. His work has been exhibited throughout the world, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.


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ABOUT / isabel

Isabel Toledo was born in Cuba and moved to New Jersey where she attended high school and met her future husband and collaborator, Ruben Toledo, whom she married in 1984. She attended the Fashion Institute of Technology (NY) and Parsons School of Design (NY) where she studied painting, ceramics, and fashion design. An avid seamstress from a young age, Toledo's work reflects not only a distinct design sense but a keen understanding of garment construction and appreciation for the geometric intricacies of pattern shapes. In 1985, Toledo presented her first collection. In 1998, she stopped presenting biannual collections, instead choosing to create on her own schedule. Toledo was named creative director of Anne Klein in 2006 after more than twenty years of working solely under her own name. Toledo made her debut with Anne Klein at New York Fashion Week in February 2007.[1] Toledo and Anne Klein parted ways later in 2007. Along with her husband, Ruben Toledo, Isabel was the recipient of the 2005 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for their work in fashion .  Toledo was also the recipient of an Otis Critics' award named for her at the Los Angeles-based Otis College of Art and Design.  


Ruben & Isabel







Ruben & Isabel
























 












EXCELLENT 5min VIDEO*** 

An encounter with the art of Ruben Toledo












































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you just saw the brilliant works of :


  RUBEN & ISABEL TOLEDO