While Ellsworth Kelly is remembered today as one of the most important post-war American abstract painters, sculptors, and printmakers, he was also a dedicated and prolific portraitist who drew likenesses of himself and his friends throughout his long life.

Though these drawings are little known and have seldom been exhibited, Kelly produced them in such prodigious numbers that the nearly 100 works in this exhibition represent, at most, a sixth of the total portraits he drew between 1941 and 2011.