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Ellsworth Kelly b. 1923 Red White Blue (EK407) signed and dated 1968 on the reverse oil on canvas 102 by 30in. 259.1 by 76.2cm. Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Mr. & Mrs. S. de Bloe, Brussels Kasmin Ltd., London Madame Hendricks, Paris Sotheby's, London, May 1973, lot 46 Acquavella Galleries, New York Sotheby's, New York, May 1986, lot 34 Acquired by the present owner from the above Exhibited New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by Ellsworth Kelly, October - November 1968, cat. no. 20 Cincinnati Art Museum, Works from the Collection of Douglas S. Cramer, August 1986 - February 1987 New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art; London, Tate Gallery; Munich, Haus der Kunst, Ellsworth Kelly: A Retrospective, October 1996 - January 1998, cat. no. 57, illustrated in color (exhibited in New York and Los Angeles only) Literature Nora Halpern Brougher, "Douglas Cramer", Galeries Magazine, December 1987, p. 127 Susan Cheever, "A Bel-Air Collection", Architectural Digest, April 1997, p. 135, illustrated in color Using reality as a point of departure, Kelly's eye for basic geometric form appeared early in his career, as witnessed in his drawings, photographs and collages of the early 1950s. His ability to extract the essence of a shape or a shadow from his environment, whether architectural or pastoral, allowed him to create a sharply focused oeuvre that manipulates a lucid vocabulary of scale, juxtaposition, structure and color through an array of subtle permutations. Red White Blue belongs to an experimental period of shaped canvases that Kelly began in 1968, which prefigure the later joined panel paintings that united curves, triangles and rectangles in dramatic combinations. But this diagonal composition also shares roots with a notable series of thin vertical rectangles, divided into sections, which are critical to the organic development of Kelly's oeuvre beginning in Paris in 1950. These ear