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Untitled (Mandorla)Untitled (Mandorla)PreviousNext

Ellsworth Kelly

American, 1923-2015

Untitled (Mandorla), 1988

Bronze

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and promised gift of Helen and Charles Schwab

With its gently inward-folding shape and velvety Sheen, Untitled (Mandorla) draws us in. Kelly first used this pointed oval form-which for centuries has signified divinity or enlightenment in Christian and Buddhist imagery-in a painting in 1949, after seeing it carved in the stone pediment of a church in Poitiers, France. Instead of enclosing a spiritual figure, this sculpture's contours surround the viewer's body, enfolding us in its uplifting expanse.