Frank Stella
born 1936
© ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025
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© ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025
License this image
Artist biography
Frank Stella born 1936
American abstract painter, born in Malden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. Began to paint abstract pictures while at Phillips Academy, Andover. Studied history at Princeton University 1954-8, also attending painting courses there under William Seitz and Stephen Greene; influenced by Pollock and Kline, later by Newman and Johns. Moved to New York in 1958. In reaction against Abstract Expressionism, painted in 1958-60 a series of black pictures with the entire field covered with regular bands, followed in 1960 by an aluminium series, his first shaped canvases. First one-man exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1960. A friend of Andre and Judd and had considerable influence on the development of Minimal sculpture. Next made several series with more radically shaped formats and some with multi-colours. Painted 'Irregular Polygons' 1966-7, then 'Protractor' series with interlaced colour bands and sometimes fan-like formats. His later work has included paintings with cut-out shapes in relief. Lives in New York.
Published
in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.705
Wikipedia entry
Frank Philip Stella (May 12, 1936 – May 4, 2024) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. He lived and worked in New York City for much of his career before moving his studio to Rock Tavern, New York. Stella's work catalyzed the minimalist movement in the late 1950s. He moved to New York City in the late 1950s, where he created works which emphasized the picture-as-object. These were influenced by the abstract expressionist work of artists like Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. He developed a reductionist approach to his art, saying he wanted to demonstrate that for him, every painting is "a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more", and disavowed conceptions of art as a means of expressing emotion. He won notice in the New York art world in 1959 when his four black pinstripe paintings were shown at the Museum of Modern Art. Stella was a recipient of the National Medal of Arts in 2009 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture by the International Sculpture Center in 2011.
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