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Ellsworth Kelly
Kilometer Marker, 1949

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Kilometer Marker
Artist name
Ellsworth Kelly
Date created
1949
Classification
painting
Medium
gesso, graphite and oil on wood
Dimensions
21 1/2 in. × 18 in. × 1 1/2 in. (54.61 cm × 45.72 cm × 3.81 cm)
Date acquired
1999
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Mimi Haas Collection, and promised gift of Helen and Charles Schwab
Copyright
© Ellsworth Kelly
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/99.346
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

How did a roadside marker inspire this work?

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transcripts

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. 

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