Ellsworth Kelly: Thumbing through the Folder. “A Dialogue on Art and Architecture with Hans Ulrich Obrist”

In this Dialogue on Art and Architecture, Ellsworth Kelly (born 1923) reminisces with Hans Ulrich Obrist about his early career, his teachers (Max Beckmann, Brancusi, Léger and Vantongerloo) and particularly on the relation of his work to architecture: “architects are usually the first people who understand my work,” he tells Obrist here, while describing his many collaborations in this field. Throughout this beautiful publication runs a series of collaged and overpainted postcards by Kelly, dating from 1949 to 1984, which are reproduced here for the first time. These postcards, referred to throughout the dialogue, are unlike any of Kelly’s paintings and sculptures, particularly in their use of body imagery; others are closer to familiar Kelly terrain, as projections of torn colored paper forms onto found landscapes and architecture. This artist’s book makes a wonderfully unusual record of a warm encounter.