Ellsworth Kelly’s Summer Cottage, Belle-Île-en-Mer

Belle-Île-en-Mer is an island off the coast of Brittany in northwest France, described as “all gray and yellow.” In July 1950, Kelly encouraged Coburn to travel there together, and for several weeks they shared a typical Breton seaman’s cottage. In August, after returning to the island alone, Kelly created a series of extraordinarily inventive drawings and paintings based on seaweed, pebbles, and the window of his house, among those his first shaped work out of wood, Wood Cuout with String I.