Untitled by Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly

1982–1983

Stainless steel

Dallas Museum of Art

Ellsworth Kelly created this imposing yet playful sculpture specifically for the 1984 opening of the Dallas Museum of Art's Edward Larrabee Barnes building. The sculpture is part of a series of works informally called "rockers," which Kelly began in the late 1950s. Based on the form of a child's rocking toy, the first of these sculptures, dating from 1959, is titled "Pony," an unambiguous reference to the shape of a hobby horse. This untitled piece of similar form is made of two simple joined arcs that rise at one end to a height of nearly 10 feet. In almost all his work, whether painting or sculpture, Kelly takes his formal cues fr