Orange Red Relief, 1959. Oil on canvas, two joined panels, 60 x 60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,Gift of the artist  96.4511. © Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly began painting monochrome panels in the early 1950s and has been experimenting with this composition (or anticomposition) ever since. With their anonymous, uninflected technique and absence of surface drawing, these pristine “painting-objects” established a new relationship between painting and its architectural context. By defining the structure and shape of each canvas through color—matte, uniform, and without gestural nuance—Kelly eliminated any figure-ground illusion and brought painting into the sculptural realm of objects. In Orange Red Relief (1959), Kelly explicitly asserts the painted canvas as a sculptural presence by setting two canvases of unequal depth side-by-side; the orange panel projects slightly farther out than its neighbor, turning painting literally into bas-relief.