Ellsworth Kelly

Known for: hard-edge abstraction; shaped canvases

Ellsworth Kelly spent three years in Paris after World War II developing a practice of hard-edge abstraction derived from shadows on architecture, plant forms, and the relationships between colored shapes on the two-dimensional surface. His monochrome panels — each a single color occupying a shaped canvas — and his two-color compositions are among the most economical and formally resolved works in postwar American art. His final work, Austin (2018), a purpose-built colored glass chapel at the Blanton Museum, was completed the year after his death.