ATLANTA—Presiding in the spacious lobby of the High Museum’s Renzo Piano-designed Wieland Pavilion is an eye-catching new wallpiece by Ellsworth Kelly. Blue Green Red was commissioned for the opening of the High’s new building.

Until last Friday, when trustee and contemporary-art collector John F. Wieland and his wife, Susan, hosted a private party at the museum, the identity of the work’s donor was unknown. But that night, “anonymous” was revealed to be none other than Lindsay Wieland Parker and John Wieland, the couple’s daughter and son.

Kelly himself was present for the occasion. Born in 1923, he has been making art for some 50 years and is best known for his minimalist, shaped, abstract paintings and wall sculptures. He had a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1973 and another at the Guggenheim Museum in 1996.

Red, green and blue are colors he has revisited recently, though he began working with them in the early 1960s. In the High piece, they engage with the blushing reds and earthy greens of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje von Bruggen’s monumental 2002 installation Balzac Petanque, a group of giant peaches and pears jauntily arrayed on a pavilion outside the lobby and viewable through floor-to-ceiling windows.

Here we are in front of your new commission for the High Museum.

Not just new—brand new! It’s my newest piece! I’ve followed the building project closely because the museum has four of my paintings, and then they asked me to do something for the lobby. It’s a lot of work getting the right colors, and I’m very particular. When I mix colors for a painting, I have the painting in my studio and every day I think, that blue is not quite right or that red needs more orange.

There was an exhibition of your work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego a few years ago, called Red Green Blue. Is this related?

Between 1963 and 1965, I did about 10 pictures using red, green and blue, and the one that San Diego owns is the biggest of the series. The Met[ropolitan Museum of Art] has one, the Whitney [Museum] has one, and several collectors have them, so San Diego pulled them all together. I did a new piece in red, green, and blue—a smaller one than the one here—for the opening of the Red Green Blue show. Before I started the series in 1963, I’d done a lot of work with the primary colors red, yellow and blue, and at some point I said, I’m going to shift and put a secondary color in there—green. In this painting at the High, the green is the interlocker. I like to look at the center, at the green, and that way in the periphery I have the red and blue blinking at me.

How did you decide to revisit those three colors?

Usually when I get an idea, the color goes right along with it. When people look at this, I don’t want them to think, What does it mean? I want them to think, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s how you feel about color. What does it do to your perception? It’s magic. A lot of modern artists have avoided green. I love all colors.

In the Oldenburg–van Bruggen piece outside, there are intermediate things: peaches and pears. Very early in my life—as when I went to Paris in 1948—I realized I didn’t want that. I wanted the space between your eye and the painting to be activated. In the Renaissance, a painting was considered a window; that lasted up to the Impressionists. When you look at a Cézanne, your eye stops at the surface. That continues with de Kooning and Jasper Johns; you see that it’s a painting of a woman or a flag and really look to see how it’s done and investigate the brushstroke.

In my work, I don’t want you to look at the surface; I want you to look at the form, the relationships. That’s why it’s very architectural. When I was setting this up, it had to work with the openings of the doorways.

You are mainly known for your abstractions, but you have also done representational work.

In school, in Boston, I’d done portraits and nudes. I didn’t know what was going on in New York. When I went to Paris in 1948, I decided easel painting was out for me; I had to do something else. I started going to museums and looking at Egyptian and Archaic Greek sculpture, and I thought, I want to do something with form, and color.

I’ve seen your drawings from Paris, such as those of the Tuileries . . .

In Boston, I very much liked Degas—his drawings of figures—and Matisse, and Picasso. I went to Paris, and I loved Mondrian and Brancusi. If I’d been in New York, I would have been more involved with de Kooning, Pollock and Rothko, but I missed all that. Now when I make paintings— and this one I call a wall sculpture because it’s on metal—I pick up fragments of what I see. Every once in a while I see something and I think, I’ve got to have this. It may be a fragment of sky or a building or a shadow.

You often use what is generally considered negative space.

The first work I did with negative space was when I lived in Paris, on Île St. Louis. There’s a bridge over to the Left Bank called the Pont de la Tournelle, and there’s one arch that forms almost half a circle. I kept looking at it because the round arch made a dark reflection in the water. I cut a big piece of wood, and another one, and I put them together. It’s the negative space under the arch. I was painting it white to get it ready, and then I thought, maybe I’ll paint it black. But then I liked it so much white, I left it. I titled it Bridge Arch in Reflection, because to me, negative space is very active.

Your work is very strongly associated with color. Do colors have specific associations for you?

I don’t think of it that way; I just love the color. They are like notes. I did a small lithograph with a black band, and under it was a green square, and my good friend Diane Waldman, who was at the Guggenheim for a long time, gave it to Bill de Kooning. She went to see him one day and my piece was on his mantle.

Were you looking at the work of Josef Albers?

I knew Albers. He was very theoretical. And a bit dogmatic. He came to an opening of mine at Sidney Janis around 1968, and I had one of my spectrum pieces there—the first one that sold. It’s now in the St. Louis Art Museum. He walked in at the opening and said, “Kelly, what color theory did you use?” And I said, “There’s no theory; it’s a painting! And I did it intuitively!” And he said, “It looks it,” and walked away.