Ellsworth Kelly Extra Small

a tiny ellsworth kelly print, red curve, has a red curve from the top left corner to about 40% of the way down the right edge. The bottom edge of the red shape is straight from the lower right corner up to about the middle of the left side. no print border, it goes right to the edges. love it. now. but didn't love it enough to buy it back in the day, alas. live and learn.
Ellsworth Kelly, Red Curve, 2006, lithograph, 12 x 6 3/4 in., ed. 100, plus 20 ap and 18 sp, this one via Bonham’s

While poking around the Gemini G.E.L. CR, I was surprised to find that River II (2005), one of Ellsworth Kelly’s superlong prints, was also his second to last print made with Gemini.

I’ll have to check the Kelly prints catalogue raisonné for details—the second edition was published in 2012, but Kelly sure seemed booked and busy right up to the end in 2015.

It’s also a surprise because the last print he made with Gemini was maybe his smallest ever. Red Curve (2006) is a single color lithograph, cropped so the shape goes right to the edges and the corners of the 12 x 6 3/4 inch sheet.

Red Curve was published for Kelly’s show at the Serpentine Gallery, a cheap, unframed edition of 100. I feel like it was easily under GBP1000, and at the time, it didn’t even seem real somehow. Now it is fascinating and formally intriguing, especially after the other full-bleed prints he’d just made, that resonate between print and object. Also it’s utterly adorable.

the glass walled entrance to joni weyl's gallery has ellsworth kelly painted in small all caps near the door handle. three of the smallest prints kelly made for gemini gel hang on the walls, and a fourth larger print is on the wall through the doorway. from left, red curve, blue thumb or whatever, and blue gray green red, four abutting blocks, are in simple white or natural frames. i swear, did they put the most stealable works in the entry just to tempt me?

[OK, close to the smallest but not the last: Blue Gray Green Red (2008) was part of the Gemini-organized Artists for Obama portfolio. Here they both are installed at Joni Weyl in 2019.]

later this afternoon update: I went through the CR, published in 2012, but it does end in 2008. I feel like if there were more prints coming, they could have fit them in. So what seems like the last last print for Kelly was a large (48 x 130 in.) version of Blue Gray Green Red. He went big, then he went home.

an ellsworth kelly print titled red curve in the shape of a guillotine blade, in a white matted natural frame, 10 x 7.5 inches, made for parkett and sold at rago in 2021
Ellsworth Kelly, Red Curve (for Parkett 56), 1999, 10 x 7 1/2 in., lithograph, ed. 70, this one sold by
Rago in 2021

The only smaller edition, though, might be Red Curve (1999), which he made for Parkett, which is 10 x 7 in. And for the 1973 Works By Artists in The New York Collection for Stockholm portfolio, Kelly made an untitled black on white screenprint that is 12 x 9 in. And while there are a couple of similarly sized Concorde etchings in the early 1980s, they’re on traditional, larger sheets.]

Rather than delve into why Kelly stopped, or what the very last prints mean, Richard Axsom, the prints CR editor, looked at what was there: a complete, ambitious, and exceptional project, and said, “River is a great summa to Kelly’s prints.”