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Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Relief, 2007, oil on canvas, two joined panels, 80 x 80 x 2¾ inches. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

$1.2M Ellsworth Kelly painting to be auctioned Sept. 16 at Guggenheim

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Relief, 2007, oil on canvas, two joined panels, 80 x 80 x 2¾ inches. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Relief, 2007, oil on canvas, two joined panels, 80 x 80 x 2¾ inches. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

NEW YORK – The Guggenheim Museum has received an extraordinary gift – a major oil-on-canvas artwork by Ellsworth Kelly titled Blue Relief – that will be auctioned in New York at The Guggenheim International Gala on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2009. Those who cannot attend the event in person can bid absentee or by phone until noon tomorrow (Wednesday).

The 2007 painting, which comes with provenance from the artist, is valued at $1.2 million. The work consists of two joined panels measuring 80 inches by 80 inches by 2¾ inches (depth).

Blue Relief was displayed from Oct. 11, 2007 through Feb. 28, 2008 at the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain as part of the exhibition “Art in America: Three Hundred Years of Innovation.” Subsequently the painting was exhibited at Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

In the late 1940s, Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923, Newburgh, N.Y.) formulated a reductive visual language that he has continued to refine and elaborate upon throughout his career. Although relentlessly abstract, his forms are anchored to the legible details of architecture and landscape, as Kelly, using his keen eye for contour, extracts fragments from the surrounding world-the sweeping curve of a Romanesque church’s nave, a crescent moon, or an opened window-and condenses them into elemental colors and shapes.

The foreground panel of Blue Relief is a sapphire quadrilateral reminiscent of a shadow cast from an unseen building. In a lyrical gesture, this vividly colored form is set askew on top of an underlying matte-white panel. This work’s chromatic splendor and the visual imbalance created by the layered canvases exemplify Kelly’s experimentation with composition and his ongoing engagement with the sculptural possibilities of painting.

For additional information about Ellsworth Kelly’s Blue Relief or to bid on the artwork, call 212-423-3584 or e-mail Ben Whine at bwhine@guggenheim.org.

About the Guggenheim International Gala:

The fifth annual Guggenheim International Gala fundraiser celebrating the Museum’s 50th anniversary will take place on Sept. 16, 2009, within the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed landmark on Fifth Avenue, where guests will enjoy a preview of the full-scale Kandinsky retrospective that opens to the public on Sept. 18. In addition, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s new performance installation, “Levels of Nothingness,” commissioned and produced by Works & Process at the Guggenheim, will premiere with two 25-minute performances at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. The evening will begin with cocktails at 7 p.m. in the rotunda and in the newly opened Cafe 3 space overlooking Central Park.

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