Black White

Black White belongs to a series of two-panel, shaped paintings in which Ellsworth Kelly explored the perceptual possibilities of the tensions generated between edge, form, line, and color. The meeting of the two identically shaped triangular canvases at their perpendicular edges creates a subtle visual dialogue between the two equal halves—the rich matte of the black triangle absorbs all light, while the white triangle gleams with a soft sheen. Black White was executed the same year that Kelly relocated from Manhattan to Spencertown in upstate New York. Kelly’s approach to hard-edge abstraction had first emerged during his time in Paris (1948–1954) where he was inspired by forms and shapes observed in both nature and the city around him, developing a practice that challenged conventional distinctions between painting and sculpture. In 1970, removed from the urban environment of New York City, he began experimenting with new forms. The triangular form in Black White, while not pinned to any specific referent, nevertheless conjures a sense of the mountainous Catskills peaks in changing light that have long inspired generations of artists, or perhaps even the geometric silhouette of the Manhattan skyline in the distance. While Kelly often explored abstraction through the interplay of multiple colors—most notably in his Spectrum series (1953 and 2014)— the particular formal and perceptual effects created through the juxtaposition of black and white, representing the polar ends of the color scale by signifying the evacuation of chroma and the suffusion of light, remained of enduring interest to him throughout his career.