Abstract Master Ellsworth Kelly Dies at 92

American master of abstract art, Ellsworth Kelly, died Sunday at his home in Spencertown, New York at the age of 92.  His death was announced by Matthew Marks of the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.

The painter, sculptor and printmaker had studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after his discharge from the U.S. Army in 1945.  His formative years as an artist were spent in Paris from 1948 to 1955 with support from the GI Bill.

He is credited with a distinctive style of American painting by combining solid shapes and colors of European abstraction with forms from everyday life.

“He was simply one of the great modern painters or our era, certainly of the 20th century,” said Harry Cooper, head curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.  Cooper also said Kelly became “something of a brand” similar to Jackson Pollock. “He was totally original, committed to his kind of abstraction and he never wavered,” said Cooper.

Art News  said, “He was among a handful of artists, emerging in the years after World War Two, who defined the art of the past half-century.”

In recent days, art museums and celebrities who love art have paid tribute to Kelly on social media.