Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments

FREE SCREENING

The Crandell and the Ellsworth Kelly Studio are pleased to present a free screening of the 2007 documentary, Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments, from Checkerboard Film Foundation, part of a year-long centennial celebration of one of the most influential American artists of his time.

Since the beginning of his career, Kelly’s emphasis on pure form and color and his impulse to suppress gesture in favor of spatial unity played a pivotal role in the development of abstract art in America. Kelly insisted on the connection between abstraction and nature, from which he extrapolated forms and colors. In this hour-long documentary, Kelly revisits the Paris of his early twenties, uncovering early influences that became leitmotifs he would return to, reiterate, refine, and re-work for decades to come.

A live Q&A with the filmmaker, Edgar Howard, President of Checkerboard Film Foundation, and Jack Shear, President of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, will directly follow the film.

May 31, 2023, would have marked Kelly’s 100th birthday. On the occasion of his May 31 centennial, a year-long celebration will showcase the artist’s indelible legacy. This collaborative event will include exhibitions and installations at the Art Institute of Chicago, Glenstone Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others; new publications; multiple gifts of artworks to museums; grant awards from the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation; a scholarly symposium; and new digital initiatives to ensure that Kelly’s legacy endures for another 100 years, and beyond.

(Photo by Jack Shear, courtesy Ellsworth Kelly Studio © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation)