NARRATOR: In the summer of 1949, Kelly and a friend traveled to Belle-Ile, off the coast of Brittany. There, his senses peeled, revealing a new form of abstraction: one born of the world. In a series of drawings, he removed everything extraneous — anything that interfered with the pure shapes that he perceived. Look, for instance, at Kilometer Marker. 

KELLY: This is one of the first paintings I did there. And I think there, going out to the island, I was there about four months. And it was like going up into the mountain, you know. I had a little cottage and it was a dirt floor.  

My cottage was on one side of the island from the port town. And I would go on my bicycle, into the port town, which was about four miles, to buy my dinner and lunch and whatever and have a drink, you know. And the high point of the island was in the center. So this kilometer marker, I passed every day on the bicycle. And I just said I liked it. You know, it was something. It has almost a square, a white square, and then the curve on the top. 

And of course, it had lettering on it, like three and a half or two and a half kilometers to the village that I was staying in. And that’s the horizon with the sky.