アメリカの現代絵画の巨匠、エルズワース・ケリー（Ellsworth Kelly）の作品集。2003年1月から4月まで「サンディエゴ現代美術館（MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO / MCASD）」で開催された展覧会に伴い刊行された。

本書のタイトルは1963年に描かれた作者の作品に似ている。長方形の油画の巨作「Red Blue Green」は作者のキャリアの極めて重要なターニングポイントとされており、正確に型取られ、バランスが取れた赤と青の二つの形が対照的な緑の背景に置かれ、地と図の間の緊張感に対する関心を示す代表作である。厳密な制限を設け、似たような大きく力強い作品群を生み出し、今でも自身の作品に通底する線、形、色に関する多くのアイディアを定義した。

1950年代後半から1960年代半ばにかけて制作されたこの作品群は、作者の唯一無二のスタイルと、1950年代のアメリカの絵画において重要視されていた抽象表現主義の骨組みを大胆に打破した20世紀後半の最も画期的な抽象画家の一人としての名声を築き上げた。本書は、収録されている21点の著名な絵画、それに関連する同時期の36点のドローイング、コラージュ、写真、そして同じ関心を元に制作された2002年の新作のセレクションを通して、この地と図をテーマとした絵画群へと繋がった想像と現実世界からのインスピレーションの複雑な相互作用を探っている。

Red Green Blue is almost the title of a 1963 painting by Ellsworth Kelly. Red Blue Green, a monumental rectangular oil work, considered a crucial fulcrum point in the artist's career, represents Kelly's concerns about the tension between the figure and the ground, offering two precisely shaped and balanced red and blue forms set against a strongly contrasting green ground. Working within a strict set of limits, he created a string of similarly grand, powerful works and defined many of the ideas about line, form, and color that still drive his work today.

These works, made from the late 50s to the mid-60s, established the artist's singular style and his reputation as one of the most innovative abstract painters of the latter half of the 20th century, one who boldly broke with the strictures of the abstract expressionist movement, which dominated painting in the United States in the 50s. Exploring the complex interplay of invented and real-world inspirations that led to this body of figure/ground paintings, this volume presents a selection of 21 major paintings and 36 related drawings, collages, and photographs from that time period, as well as a new painting from 2002 that reexamines related concerns.

Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York in 1923. His first one-person exhibition was held in 1951 in Paris, where he was studying on the G.I. Bill following World War II. Kelly returned to the United States in 1954, renting a studio in downtown New York, and his position among America's most esteemed painters began to take form. Since that time, the artist's work has been the subject of numerous major retrospectives worldwide and is presently included in all of the most important public collections of contemporary art. The drawings reproduced in this volume were on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in November, 2006, accompanying a major exhibition of new paintings and sculpture. Kelly currently lives and works in upstate New York.