Rago Auctions

For Ellsworth Kelly, a plant drawing is not simply a rendering of a plant. It is a portrait, a remembrance of his meeting with the subject, and perhaps most importantly, a bridge to his larger painted abstractions. Kelly began creating these line drawings in the late 1940s, at the time of his breakthrough in Paris. Relying on only the weight of the continuous line to convey the subject’s presence, Kelly followed in the tradition of artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Calder, allowing abstract shapes to emerge from nature. The artist saw these as important exercises in the letting go of self-consciousness and within the reductive nature of the drawings, he was able to find a foundation for many of his paintings. Kelly has continued to create his plant drawings over the decades and they have been featured in two major surveys at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, most recently, Ellsworth Kelly Plant Drawings, 5 June - 3 September 2012, where this particular work was exhibited.