Ellsworth Kelly: Sketchbook #26 – Limited Edition Facsimile

Foreword by Christophe Cherix. Introduction by Samantha Friedman. Over his renowned, six-decade career, Ellsworth Kelly experimented with the sparest of lines, forms, and uninterrupted planes of color. Yet while his works appear strikingly simple, they changed our very understanding of artistic form—and of composition, or making, itself. Kelly’s extraordinary sketchbooks, which remained largely private throughout the artist’s lifetime, reveal the intricacies of his unique process. Made between 1954 and 1956—when Kelly returned to New York after six formative years in France— Sketchbook #26 represents the artist at his most iconic. Across thirty-six pages of a spiral-bound Strathmore sketchbook, he wielded pencil and felt-tip pen in a bold, saturated palette to explore forms that are at once geometric and idiosyncratic. This deluxe facsimile, produced in a limited run of 500 copies, represents an exquisitely faithful reproduction of Kelly’s sketchbook, including pages with cut-outs and collage elements. The sketchbook and an accompanying booklet featuring an introductory essay are housed together in a custom clothbound clamshell case.