Ellsworth Kelly describes the thirty wood sculptures he created over the span of four decades between 1958 and 1996 as his “totems.” This small body of work, far less known than his metal monuments, has a talismanic intimacy for Kelly that distinguishes it from the rest of his oeuvre. Ellsworth Kelly: Wood Sculpture presents a retrospective of these wood sculptures for the first time, investigating the development of this intensely personal expression of Kelly’s commitment to abstract art—and to nature. Many of these wood sculptures, now in private collections, are rarely seen and hardly known by the public. Accompanying a major exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2011, this book speaks to the artist’s lifetime of acute observation and how deeply “of nature” his work has always been.

2012 New York Book Show Winner

2012 New England Book Show Winner

Brenda Richardson, art museum curator and administrator at the Berkeley Art Museum (1964-1974) and The Baltimore Museum of Art (1975-1998), now writes independently on art and artists. In recent years she has published on the work of Jennifer Bartlett, Lynda Benglis, James Lee Byars, Robert Gober, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Andy Warhol, and John Waters, among others.