“Incomplete curves, the beginnings and ends of which we cannot reconstruct with our eyes, are simple means that create visual situations rich in potential meaning.”

—Gottfried Boehm

Ellsworth Kelly’s Black Curve, Radius 12 Feet, executed in 1976, consists of a graphite rectangle outlined on a blank page with a collaged black paper element affixed to the lower half of the image, bisecting the sheet diagonally. The title of this piece references the triangle-like form’s origin from a much larger circular form with a radius of 12 feet. Dominated by this black curved form, the work finds resonance in its stark visual contrast and balanced composition, evoking natural curvatures such as the earth’s circumference or a gently sloping hill. It was created just four years after the artist’s first series of curve paintings from 1972, each of which features a curved shape in a single color on a white or black ground. In ensuing years, Kelly would expand this concept in various media, including drawing, collage and photography, furthering his exploration of the curve as a formal element.

A key element of his practice, the medium of collage harkens back to Kelly’s childhood. At nine-years old, the artist was reprimanded by his teacher while working on an art project for class; he and his classmates had been assigned to make “a drawing of springtime” on construction paper. Kelly attempted to draw an iris, but was dissatisfied with how the paper received his crayon and struggled to stay within the lines. Midway through, he decided to cut out his colored shapes instead. As Kelly has described, he was trying to make his “first collage, building up blocks of solid color” while everyone else was “drawing so palely.”ⁱ The artist recalls his teacher scolding him, saying “Kelly, we’re not here to make a mess. Go stand in the corner.”ⁱⁱ Although the idea of Ellsworth Kelly creating “messy” art seems completely antithetical to the simplicity and precision for which he is now known, collage would come to represent the more playful side of the artist’s practice. Henri Matisse’s late collages, which Kelly encountered in Paris in 1950, served as an inspiration to the American artist, especially in his collaged postcard series, which he began in the 1950s and continued all the way until 2005, making over 400 works.

By the early 1970s, Kelly was finally achieving critical recognition. Although included in Dorothy Miller’s seminal exhibition Sixteen Americans held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1959, which solidified him as a member of a new generation of artists including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella, it wasn’t until 1973 that Kelly was the subject of his first solo exhibition at MoMA. This midcareer retrospective was a monumental achievement for the artist, who fifty years old at the time. Surveying work as early as 1949 and spanning until 1973, this show would travel across the country, establishing Kelly as one of the foremost artistic voices of his time.

“What I’ve tried to capture is the reality of flux, to keep art an open, incomplete situation, to get at the rapture of seeing.”

—Ellsworth Kelly

In 1976, the year the present work was created, Kelly had moved upstate to Spencertown – about 130 miles north of the city – tired of the social pressures of living and working in New York and looking for more studio space. One can perhaps see this shift from the busy skyline of the city to the sloping vistas of the mountains in the gentle curves of Black Curve, Radius 12 Feet. For Kelly, even the simplest of forms retain an essence of the organic. Perhaps derived from his childhood interest in birdwatching – his first investigation into color and shape – Kelly’s aesthetic vocabulary of reduced forms maintains an enlivening tension and almost sensuality which stand at odds against the prevailing Abstract Expressionist art of his time. Ever the close looker, Black Curve, Radius 12 Feet is an exemplary example of Kelly’s well-trained eye.

ⁱTricia Y. Paik, Ellsworth Kelly, New York, 2015, p. 12.
ⁱⁱIbid.