JAMES KELLY
Painter, Printer, 1913-2003

"I was just trying to work instinctively, hoping that I would arrive at the painting
automatically as happened many times. The painting took over."

The boisterous, impromptu creations of artists such as Hassel Smith and James Kelly have much in common with the expansive generosity of such jazz musicians as Lu Watters or Bob Scobey...
- Susan Landauer, Paper Trails: San Francisco Abstract Expressionist Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors, The Art Museum of Santa Cruz County, 1993

His forms are bold, swift, telling, and altogether his own.
- Alfred Frankenstein, art critic

Among the most noteworthy of the action painters were James Kelly .... Kelly's specialty was a volcanic gesturalism in which boundless energy was suggested through the accumulation of dense swatches and slabs of color that drove in surging, rhythmic trajectories across his canvases.
- Thomas Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980

Education
Studied at the Philadelphia Museum School, 1937; Pennsylvania Academy Fine Arts, 1938; Barnes Foundation, 1941; California School of Fine Arts, 1951-1954.

Selected Solo Exhibitions 1954-1990
The Place, San Francisco, 1954; San Francisco Art Association Gallery, 1956; Stryke Gallery, New York, 1963; East Hampton Gallery, New York, 1965; Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania, 1966; Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York, 1968; Westbeth Gallery, New York, 1971; Wiegand Gallery, College of Notre Dame, Belmont, California, 1990.

Selected Group Exhibitions 1949-1985
Contemporary Art Association, Philadelphia, PA, 1949; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1951; Mirror Five Group, California School of Fine Arts, 1952; King Ubu Gallery, San Francisco, 1954; "6" Gallery, San Francisco, 1955; 19th Annual Drawing and Print Show, San Francisco Museum, 1955; California Painters, University of Minnesota, 1956; California School, Yes or No?, Oakland Museum, 1956; 75th-77th Annual Painting and Sculpture Annual, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1956-1958; Purchase Prize, San Francisco Art Association, 1957; Directions - Bay Area Painting, Richmond Art Center, 1957; California Painters Exhibition, Oakland Museum, 1957; Fresh Paint, De Young Museum, 1958; Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, 1959; Contemporary Paintings and Sculpture, Riverside Museum, New York, 1962; East Hampton Gallery, New York, 1963; Five Man Show (Lester Johnson, Robert Loberg, Richards Ruben, Felix Ruvolo), Berkeley Gallery, 1963; New Dimensions of Lithography, University of Southern California, 1964; National Lithography Exhibition, Florida State University, 1967; Late Fifties at the Ferus, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1968; A Period of Exploration, Oakland Museum, 1973; California Painting and Sculpture: The Modern Era, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., 1977; Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945-1980, The Oakland Museum, 1985.