What’s new at The Hyde? Lots! On Saturday, June 24, The Hyde Collection opens two companion exhibitions, Ellsworth Kelly: Slow Curve and Ellsworth Kelly: Fruits & Flowers. Take a walk through the artwork of one of the most influential innovators and contributors to the American art movement, comprised of prints on loan from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation in Portland, Oregon.
Ellsworth Kelly at The Hyde
Clear your calendar for Saturday, June 24, because you’re not going to want to miss the opening of not one, but two, new exhibitions featuring the artwork of Ellsworth Kelly at The Hyde Collection. Inspired by the four works by Kelly on display in the inaugural exhibition in the Feibes & Schmitt Gallery, To Distribute and Multiply: The Feibes & Schmitt Gift, and using pieces from the collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer, The Hyde has organized Ellsworth Kelly: Fruits & Flowers and Ellsworth Kelly: Slow Curve.
Ellsworth Kelly: Slow Curve will be on display in the Charles R. Wood Gallery and continues The Hyde’s commitment to Modern and Contemporary art with seventy prints examining Kelly’s experimentation with curved fields of color. The curve is an iconic shape in much of Kelly’s bold and bright abstract work. During the second half of the twentieth century Kelly’s distinctive style of using minimalist colors and shaped canvases set him apart from other artists of the time. His paintings and innovative approach live on in the tight ellipses, broad segments, sweeping arcs, and rounded shapes on display at The Hyde.
The companion exhibition, Ellsworth Kelly: Fruits & Flowers, includes twenty-six lithographs that reveal the sources of Kelly’s non-rectilinear shapes. Derived from his lifelong fascination with nature, Kelly created hundreds of drawings of botanical subjects that would become the basis of several suites of lithographs, some of which will be on display right here in Glens Falls. These contour drawings of calla lilies, camellias, magnolia blossoms, and more create a bridge to his non-objective prints and paintings.
Ellsworth Kelly redefined abstract artwork with his striking paintings, sculpture, prints, and drawings, solidifying his place as one of the most important American artists of the last fifty years. No one understands that more than collector Jordan D. Schnitzer. From his collection of more than 10,000 works by 900 different artists, he and his family foundation have generously lent the pieces that made both of these shows possible.
Both exhibits will be on display through Sunday, September 24.
More About Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York in 1923 and studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before joining the U.S. Army in 1943. Following his service, he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he developed his unique style and began painting canvases in a single field of color. He was internationally recognized for his non-rectangular canvases by the end of the 1950’s and went on to display at multiple galleries and museum exhibitions after moving back to the state of New York. In addition to many other awards, Ellsworth Kelly received the National Medal of the Arts in 2013, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, before his passing in 2015.
What is The Hyde?
The Hyde Collection, founded by Charlotte and Louis Hyde, brings art normally only found in a big city right to upstate New York. The permanent collection of almost 4,000 works spans centuries and mediums covering European, American, as well as Contemporary and Modern Art.
