Spectrum II

In Spectrum II, Ellsworth Kelly disrupts the traditional red-to-violet progression of the rainbow spectrum. Instead, he develops his own personal spectrum of hues beginning with bright, lemon yellow and ending with golden yellow, with cobalt and violet in the center. Kelly has here joined 13 individually painted canvases, producing a work almost 23 feet long, which reinvents the early European tradition of the polyptych, or joined multipanel painting. As its title indicates, Spectrum II is the second of a series of eight Spectrum paintings that Kelly produced over a more than 60-year period from 1953 until 2014.