Museum of Modern Art
Soon after completing the ‘La Combe’ series (around 1950) I had a dream in which I was assisted by many children on a scaffold, painting a huge mural made up of square panels fitted together. Each panel was being painted by a child very quickly in long black strokes with huge brushes. The work was done in seconds. Upon waking I immediately made a reminder sketch of the mural. Later I made a drawing of many ink strokes, which I cut up into twenty squares and placed at random in a four-by-five grid…
7′ 10 1/2″ x 7′ 10 1/2″
Museum of Modern Art, New York
“Kelly arranged the sixty–four square panels of the grid in an arbitrary sequence, likening his method to the “the work of a bricklayer.” Using squares of commercial colored paper left over from a previous series of collages, he first made a study for Colors for a Large Wall. Then he precisely matched the hues of the papers with oil paint, and arranged the final, full–size panels in strict adherence to the paper study.”
