Ellsworth Kelly was born May 31, 1923 in Newburgh, New York in grew up near Hackensack, New Jersey. He studied art at the Pratt Institute, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It was in Paris were Kelly visited the studios of Brancusi, Giacometti, and others. In the early 1950s, Kelly returned to the United States and began to paint. His visual style has numerous sources, from Surrealist improvisational drawing to geometry to camouflage apparel. He has become known to most viewers primarily for color-field painting and for large-scale geometric forms. Kelly's work today is on permanent display in museums in London, Madrid, New York, Paris, and San Francisco.
