Chatham XII: Yellow Black

Ellsworth Kelly's "Chatham XII: Yellow Black" (1971) is an oil on canvas from a series of works titled after Chatham, the town in upstate New York where Kelly had a studio and home. The Chatham series represents Kelly's sustained engagement with a particular place and its light, landscape, and atmosphere—not through representation but through the distillation of visual experience into pure form and color. This particular work in the series, number XII, uses yellow and black, two colors that Kelly often combined for their strong contrast and optical energy. The composition likely consists of a yellow form on a black ground or a more complex arrangement of the two colors across the canvas. The series numbering (XII) suggests that it was part of a systematic exploration of variations. Kelly's method involved working through a set of formal possibilities systematically, each painting in the series investigating a different combination or permutation of the basic elements.

Kelly's Chatham series demonstrates his practice of working in series, exploring the infinite variations possible within a limited set of formal elements, a method that connects his work to the traditions of music and mathematics.

Yellow and black in dynamic tension, this painting from the Chatham series captures the essence of a particular place and light distilled into the fundamental elements of form and color.