American, 1936 - 2024
Frank Stella was an American artist best known for his use of geometric patterns and shapes in creating both paintings and sculptures. Stella’s works utilized the formal properties of shape, color, and composition to explore non-literary narratives, as seen in his work Harrar II (1967) from the Protractor series. “Abstraction didn't have to be limited to a kind of rectilinear geometry or even a simple curve geometry. It could have a geometry that had a narrative impact. In other words, you could tell a story with the shapes,” he explained. “It wouldn't be a literal story, but the shapes and the interaction of the shapes and colors would give you a narrative sense. You could have a sense of an abstract piece flowing along and being part of an action or activity.”
Born on May 12, 1936 in Malden, MA, Stella went on to study history at Princeton University before moving to New York in 1958. Having moved to the city, Stella was immersed in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, but it was the work of Jasper Johns that inspired Stella’s Black Paintings of 1958-1960. These flatly painted, austere works, helped open up the doors to Minimalism. Through the following decades, Stella gained traction in the art world and in 1970 he became the youngest artist ever to be granted a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Stella abandoned the flat picture plane, pushing his works away from the wall in assemblages bristling with painted aluminum curlicues, curves and whorls. These “maximalist paintings,” as he called them, were extroverted, joyous and buzzing with energy, far removed from the brooding authority of the black paintings. They served as a calling card for Stella’s next phase, as a designer of large public works, such as the murals for the Gas Company Tower in Los Angeles (1991) and the hatlike bandshell, formed of convoluted aluminum ribbons, that he delivered to the city of Miami in 1997.
In 2015, when the Whitney Museum of American Art reopened in its new building, in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, the inaugural exhibition was a Stella retrospective.
Born on May 12, 1936 in Malden, MA, Stella went on to study history at Princeton University before moving to New York in 1958. Having moved to the city, Stella was immersed in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, but it was the work of Jasper Johns that inspired Stella’s Black Paintings of 1958-1960. These flatly painted, austere works, helped open up the doors to Minimalism. Through the following decades, Stella gained traction in the art world and in 1970 he became the youngest artist ever to be granted a solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Stella abandoned the flat picture plane, pushing his works away from the wall in assemblages bristling with painted aluminum curlicues, curves and whorls. These “maximalist paintings,” as he called them, were extroverted, joyous and buzzing with energy, far removed from the brooding authority of the black paintings. They served as a calling card for Stella’s next phase, as a designer of large public works, such as the murals for the Gas Company Tower in Los Angeles (1991) and the hatlike bandshell, formed of convoluted aluminum ribbons, that he delivered to the city of Miami in 1997.
In 2015, when the Whitney Museum of American Art reopened in its new building, in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, the inaugural exhibition was a Stella retrospective.
