Stella, Frank, 1936–, American artist, b. Malden, Mass. In his early "black paintings" Stella exhibits the precision and rationality that characterized minimalism, minimalism, schools of contemporary art and music, with their origins in the 1960s, that have emphasized simplicity and objectivity.

Minimalism in the Visual Arts

..... Click the link for more information. employing parallel angular stripes to emphasize the rectangular shape of his large canvases. His innovative and influential use of irregularly shaped canvases first appeared in his metallic series in 1960. Later examples of his work stress color in decorative curved motifs. In the 1970s and 80s, Stella abandoned the studied, minimalist aesthetic in favor of a more improvised, dynamic, and dramatic idiom in mixed-media. During that time he abandoned flat paintings and instead created large, jutting, multipart, three-dimensional painting-constructions that often incorporate bright colors, enlarged versions of French curves, and lively brushstroke patterns.

Stella's work became fully three-dimensional in the early 1990s in a series of dense abstract sculptures composed of found and cast elements in stainless steel and bronze. These unpainted and often large-scale metal wall constructions, with their tangled, layered, and looping shapes, project an air of vibrant spontaneity. One of his most important and monumental sculptures is Prince of Homburg (1995–2001), installed outside the National Gallery of Art's East Building, Washington, D.C. Throughout his career, Stella also has been a prolific printmaker. The Whitney Museum, New York City, has several of his paintings, and his works are included in numerous museum and corporate collections worldwide.

Bibliography

See Frank Stella: An Illustrated Biography (1996) by S. Guberman; studies by W. Rubin (1980), L. Rubin, ed. (1986), and A. Pacquement (1988).

Stella, Frank (Philip)

(born May 12, 1936, Malden, Mass., U.S.) U.S. painter. He moved to New York City after studying history at Princeton University and there began his innovative “black paintings” (1958–60), incorporating symmetrical series of thin white stripes that replicated the canvas shape when seen against their black backgrounds. As a leading figure of Minimalism, in the mid 1960s he began using polychromy in an influential series marked by intersecting geometric curvilinear shapes and plays of vivid and harmonious colours. In the 1970s he began producing sensuously coloured, mixed-media reliefs featuring more organic shapes. He was given retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 and 1987.

Stella, Frank (Philip) (1936– ) painter; born in Malden, Mass. (nephew of Joseph Stella). He studied art at Princeton (1954–58), settled in New York City (1958), and worked as a house painter. He produced abstract "pin-stripe" works (1959), such as The Marriage of Reason and Squalor (1959), painted his "black" series (c. 1960), and soon was experimenting with shaped canvases and copper and aluminum paint. From 1964 to 1965 he created his Notched V series and, later, began his large sculptural wall reliefs, The Indian Bird Series (1977–78). Later his work was three dimensional.