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BiographyMosport, 1981Born in Malden, Massachusetts, Frank Stella first studied art at the Phillips Academy, Andover. He continued his study at Princeton University. After graduating he moved to New York City, where he supported himself by painting houses.When Stella entered the art scene, many young American artists were struggling with the legacy of abstract expressionism, which had set the standard for avant-garde art since the late 1940s. Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and others had established a visual vocabulary of abstract, energetic self-expression. Although he was attracted at first by the physicality of abstract expressionism, Stella was searching for a new way to approach the canvas. The repetition, flatness, and unemotional restraint of Jasper Johns' flag and target paintings provided inspiration.Stella's explorations began with his series of black "pin-stripe" paintings, which created a furor in the New York art world in 1959. That year, at age twenty-three, he was the youngest artist included in the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Sixteen Americans. Stella's method of working systematically in a series emphasized his problem-solving approach to painting. He arranged flat color fields into repetitive, geometric patterns and created all-over, non-illusionistic surfaces. His logic, control, and extreme reductionism prefigured minimalism.Stella continued working in an austere style through the early 1960s, but gradually his canvases assumed curvilinear shapes and a bright palette. In the 1970s he moved from works on flat surfaces to compositions which projected out from the wall. First Stella made collages, then shallow reliefs, and finally fully spatial constructions like the Circuit series. The complex shapes and the colorful, painterly marks of more recent work refer to the gestural abstract art of the 1950s. While the scale and size of Stella's works have become grander, the process has become more spontaneous. The artist continues to push the relationship of figure and ground to the point of minimizing the ground. The result is sculptural.This biography is sourced from: nga.gov
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WorksOpen a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Private Collection
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Private Collection
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Private Collection
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Private Collection
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup:
Private Collection
Exhibitions-
Summer Group Exhibition: Part I
Al Held, Alan Shields, Frank Stella June 2 - July 18, 2014Read more -
Frank Stella
Polish Village April 30 - May 23, 2014Van Doren Waxter is pleased to present a solo exhibitionFrank Stella: Polish Village April 30 – May 23, 2014 Van Doren Waxter is pleased to present Frank Stella: Polish Village,...Read more -
Molded, Folded & Found
October 16 - December 23, 2008Louise Bourgeois Anthony Caro John Chamberlain Mark di Suvero Anish Kapoor Robert Morris Louise Nevelson Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen Frank Stella Greenberg Van Doren Gallery is pleased to...Read more -
All American, Part II
October 8 - November 2, 2002Group exhibition JENNIFER BARTLETT• WILLEM DE KOONING •RICHARD DIEBENKORN• SAM FRANCIS• HELEN FRANKENTHALER• ARSHILE GORKY• HANS HOFMANN• ELLSWORTH KELLY• FRANZ KLINE• ROBERT MOTHERWELL• GEORGIA O'KEEFFE• ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG• DOROTHEA ROCKBURNE• ED...Read more -
Frank Stella
Hacilar February 19 - March 16, 2002Artemis • Greenberg Van Doren • Fine Art is pleased to present new works by contemporary American artist Frank Stella, on view from February 19 – March 16, 2002. The...Read more -
All American
November 14 - December 28, 2001Group exhibition Willem de Kooning • Richard Diebenkorn • Sam Francis • Hans Hofmann Franz Kline • Roy Lichtenstein • Robert Motherwell • Jackson Pollock Robert Rauschenberg • Frank Stella...Read more
Press-
Shows! Shows! Shows! 34 New York Must-See Gallery Exhibitions to See This May
by Sarah Cascone & Caroline Goldstein, Artnet News, May 1, 2018 -
Little-Seen Works From an Artist Who Influenced Stella and Kelly
Al Held, Brushstrokes, India Ink Drawings from 1960T-Magazine, May 2, 2016 -
Frank Stella: Polish Village
Time Out New York, May 1, 2014
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