In 2000, Frank Stella showed one of his works at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London.
Ian Nickerson/PA Picture via Getty Images
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In 2000, Frank Stella showed one of his works at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London.
Ian Nickerson/PA Picture via Getty Images
Frank Stella, the famous minimalist painter, died of lymphoma at his home in Manhattan, New York, on Saturday at the age of 87.
Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, which represents Stella, confirmed the news to NPR.
“Marianne Boesky began representing Stella in 2014, and the gallery is deeply grateful for a decade of collaboration with the artist and her studio,” Boesky said in a statement shared with NPR. “It was a privilege to work with Frank over the past decade. He was a remarkable legacy and he will be missed.”
Stella was one of the most influential American artists of her time and a pioneer of the Minimalist movement in the early 1960s. During that time, painters and sculptors challenged the idea that art should be representational and used their medium as their message.
Rather than presenting a three-dimensional world through the canvas, some of Stella’s early artworks reflected his desire to have a direct visual impact on the viewer.A series titled black painting Use parallel black stripes to suggest that the painting is a two-dimensional surface. As Stella once said: “What you see is what you get.”
Stella’s Raise the flag! (1959) is part of a series of paintings that brought him fame as an artist in the 1950s.
2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.digital imaging
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2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.digital imaging
Stella’s Raise the flag! (1959) is part of a series of paintings that brought him fame as an artist in the 1950s.
2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.digital imaging
Stella Terry Gross said in a statement: “It’s about being able to create an abstract painting that’s not actually based on anything but the gesture of the creation itself, which is The gesture that created the painting. fresh air Interview in 2000.
Frank Stella was born into a middle-class Italian-American family. His father was a gynecologist who painted houses during the Great Depression, and his mother was a homemaker and artist. Young Stella grew up surrounded by paint. His mother’s artwork helped him whenever he repainted his home. “I’ve always loved painting,” he told Gross, “the materiality of it.”
While he was in high school in Massachusetts, he began to explore painting more professionally under the tutelage of abstract painter Patrick Morgan. Even while studying history as an undergraduate at Princeton University, Stella continued to take art courses. Through Ivy League connections, Stella was introduced to the art world of New York City, which began to shape his early artistic vision when he encountered artists such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, who Later became one of his most respected influences.
“What I really wanted most was to make art that was as good as the work that good artists make. I wanted to one day be able to make art that was as good as good artists, but I didn’t expect it to be that way right away.” [Willem] De Kooning or Kline or [Barnett] Newman or Pollock or [Mark] Roscoe.They are my heroes and I want to make art as good as them,” he said fresh air.
Sculpture created in 2014 by Frank Stella titled Inflatable star and Jupiter February 18, 2015, Royal Academy of Arts Courtyard, London.
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Sculpture created by Frank Stella in 2014 titled Inflatable star and Jupiter February 18, 2015, Royal Academy of Arts Courtyard, London.
Ben Stanthal/AFP via Getty Images
Stella made her debut at the Museum of Modern Art in New York when she was only 23 years old.Shortly after his series black painting, He started in 1958, Stella created two more series, aluminum painting (1960) and Bronze painting (1960-61), dedicated to the idea that art is a medium, as he put it protector In 2015, it should be “pretty simple.”
In 1970, at the age of 33, Stella became the youngest artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His exhibition covers ten years of his paintings, emphasizing his originality in simplicity.
In the 1990s, Stella’s work evolved from canvases to colorful geometric structures and sculptures. He began using computer technology and architectural renderings to incorporate digital imagery into his work.his Moby Dick The series is a group of paintings, prints and sculptures whose titles are taken from chapters of Herman Melville’s classic novels. According to the Princeton University Art Museum, the series is Stella’s “most ambitious artistic undertaking… [that] Pushing the boundaries between printmaking, painting and sculpture.
Visitors walk through the installation The Honor and Glory of the Whaling Industry (1991) Frank Stella on display at the Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany, 2010.
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Visitors walk through the installation The Honor and Glory of the Whaling Industry (1991) Frank Stella on display at the Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany, 2010.
Walker Hartmann/DDP/AFP via Getty Images
Stella was a straightforward, rather forthright artist who never really cared what others thought of him or his art. But his six-decade career inspired generations of artists, including painter Julie Mehretu. “Once I really started to understand his work and follow it, I found that he kept going with something innovative, interesting and extremely rigorous,” she told NPR in 2015.
Stella’s numerous awards and honors include the 2009 National Medal of Arts, the country’s highest honor recognizing artistic achievement, and the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award for Contemporary Sculpture from the International Sculpture Center.
