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Learn about Frank Stella, a prominent figure in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Explore his biography, works, influences, and awards from this comprehensive encyclopedia article.
May 4, 2024 · Frank Stella, whose laconic pinstripe “black paintings” of the late 1950s closed the door on Abstract Expressionism and pointed the way to an era of cool minimalism, died on Saturday at his home...
Frank Stella (born May 12, 1936, Malden, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 4, 2024, New York, New York) was an American painter who began as a leading figure in the Minimalist art movement and later became known for his irregularly shaped works and large-scale multimedia reliefs.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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.
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In 1959, Frank Stella gained early, immediate recognition with his series of coolly impersonal black striped paintings that turned the gestural brushwork and existential angst of Abstract Expressionism on its head. Focusing on the formal elements of art-making, Stella went on to create increasingly complicated work that seemed to follow a natural p...
A decisive departure from Abstract Expressionism, Stella's Black Paintingsseries consists of precisely delineated parallel black stripes produced by smoothly applied house paint. The striped patter...Created according to a predetermined, circumscribed system imposed by the artist, the Black Paintingsserved as an important catalyst for Minimalist art of the 1960s. Similar to Stella's parallel st...Stella was an early practitioner of nonrepresentational painting, rather than artwork alluding to underlying meanings, emotions, or narratives, and has remained one to this day. Working according t...Baroque artists such as the early-17th-century Italian painter Caravaggio developed illusionistic "tricks" that convincingly suggested that their subjects emerged out of the canvas and into the spa...Childhood
Frank Stella was born the oldest of three children to first-generation Italian-American parents Frank and Constance (née Santonelli) Stella. Both his parents were art lovers, and his mother had attended art school and enjoyed painting landscapes. His father was a gynecologist. As a child, Stella suffered an accident that left him with missing joints in the fingers on his left hand, which later (around 1958) caused him to fail the Army physical and to be exempted from service during the Vietna...
Early Training
Stella continued taking art courses at Princeton University, while earning a degree in history. His Princeton professors, painter Stephen Greene and art historian William Seitz, introduced Stella to the New York art world by bringing him to exhibitions in the city, thereby shaping his earliest artistic aesthetic. These trips to New York galleries exposed Stella to artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and, most critical for Stella's subsequent development, Jasper Johns, whose geometri...
Mature Period
From his Black Paintings, Stella moved onto the Aluminum Paintings (1960) and the Copper Paintings (1960-61), for which he created his own geometrically shaped canvases, challenging the traditional rectangular format. Much of his work at this time drew on the stripe motif first deployed in the Black Paintings, but he soon began to embrace complex circular motifs as well as a brighter palette, especially in the Irregular Polygon (1965-67) and Protractor(1967-71) series. Critic Peter Schjeldahl...
Learn about Frank Stella, a key figure in American modernism who challenged the conventions of painting with his minimalist, geometric, and sculptural works. Explore his biography, ideas, accomplishments, and important artworks from the Black Paintings to the shaped canvases.
- American
- May 12, 1936
- Malden, Massachusetts
- May 4, 2024
May 4, 2024 · Renowned minimalist painter Frank Stella died Saturday of lymphoma at his home in Manhattan, N.Y. The artist was 87 years old. Stella's representative, Marianne Boesky Gallery in...
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May 5, 2024 · Frank Stella, the American artist renowned for his abstract works, died on Saturday at the age of 87, his longtime representative said in a statement. Stella died at his home in Manhattan.
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