Artists & Works |
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Frank Stella |
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Frank Stella first became known in the early sixties for severely
reductionist works that emphasized the concept as paintings as sculptural
objects. Born in Massachusetts, Stella studied art at Phillips Academy
and Princeton. Upon moving to New York, then still in the thrall
of the Abstract-Expressionist legacy, Stella became a house painter
to support himself. He had his first show of black pinstripe paintings
in 1959 and was the youngest artist to be included in the Museum
of Modern Art's Sixteen Americans, also in 1959. Throughout the
sixties and seventies, Stella's paintings were exhibited in landmark
exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, among other venues. Several retrospective exhibitions have
been held of his work, including two at the Museum of Modern Art.
Stella has also had important public art commissions throughout
the eighties and nineties. Stella moved from his earlier emphasis on severe geometric compositions to curvilinear shapes and brighter colors, eventually, in the eighties, making gestural paintings that referenced the heyday of Abstract-Expressionism. Always, however, Stella has tried to erase or at least blur the difference between painting and sculpture. Starting in the early seventies, his paintings began to push out from the wall, eventually, as the years progressed, becoming full spatial constructions. The handmade paper work Grodno is typical of Stella's experimentation in sculptural works that are more like reliefs than paintings. Stella's print for the Homage to Picasso portfolio is more referential of Stella's experimentation in repetitive geometric patterns, using bright colors. |
CRITICAL EXCERPTS |
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Frank Stella, The Pratt Lecture, "Frank Stella: The Black
Paintings" (1976) |