Frank StellaDespairia1995
1995
About the Item
- Creator:Frank Stella (1936, American)
- Creation Year:1995
- Dimensions:Height: 20.01 in (50.8 cm)Width: 52.01 in (132.1 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:London, GB
- Reference Number:
Frank Stella
Frank Stella was one of the central figures in postwar American art. A proponent of minimalism and non-representational abstraction, Stella was a painter, printmaker and sculptor.
A native of Massachusetts, Stella attended Phillips Academy in Andover and earned a BA from Princeton, where he studied art and color theory with Josef Albers and Hans Hofmann. Stella frequented New York galleries as a student and was intrigued by the work of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, both of whom were at the height of their creative powers in the late 1950s.
After moving to New York in 1958, Stella gravitated toward the geometric abstraction and restrained painting style of Barnett Newman and Jasper Johns.
Johns’s flat, graphic images of common objects such as targets and flags prompt viewers to question the essential nature of representation and whether these pictures are really paintings or simply new iterations of the items themselves. Stella pushed Johns’s reasoning further, considering paintings on canvas as objects in their own right, like sculptures, rather than representations. This led him to reject certain formal conventions, eschewing sketches and often using nontraditional materials, like house paint.
In 1959, Stella created his “Black Paintings,” series, in which bands of black paint are separated by thin, precise stripes of bare canvas. At a time when contemporary painting was all about wild gestures, thick paint and formal abandon, these pieces created a sensation. That same year, Stella's work was included in the exhibition "Sixteen Americans" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and he joined the roster of artists represented by Leo Castelli Gallery. In 1960, he began introducing color into his work and using unconventionally shaped canvases to complement his compositions.
In his “Eccentric Polygon” series, from 1965 and ‘66, Stella embraces asymmetry and bold color, creating forms delineated by painted fields and by the edges of the canvas. This series was followed by the 1967–70 “Protractor” series, characterized by colorful circles and arcs. Named after the ancient cities whose circular plans Stella had noticed while traveling in the Middle East during the 1960s, these works usually comprised several canvases set flush against one another so that the geometric figures in each section came together in a larger, more complex whole.
Also in the mid-1960s, Stella started exploring printmaking, initially working with Kenneth Tyler, of Gemini G.E.L., and later installing printing equipment in his own studio. In 1968, he created the “V” series of lithographs, which included the print Quathlamba I. Following a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, Stella began working in three dimensions, adding relief elements to paintings, which could almost be considered wall-mounted sculptures.
Stella’s 1970–73 “Polish Village” series was inspired by documentary photos and architectural drawings of Polish synagogues that had been destroyed by Nazis during World War II. The resulting works — composed primarily of paint and cloth on plywood — are more rugged and less polished than his previous series.
Herman Melville's Moby Dick was Stella's muse for a series of three- dimensional works he created in the 1980s in which waveforms, architectural elements and Platonic solids play a prominent role. During this period, Stella embraced a new, exuberant style that is exemplified in "La Scienza della Fiacca."
In 1997, the artist oversaw the creation of the Stella Project, a 5,000-square-foot work inside the Moores Opera House at the University of Houston. A large free-standing sculpture by Stella stands outside the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Stella’s work is in the collections of numerous important museums around the world, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Menil Collection, in Houston; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington, D.C.; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in 2009, and was given the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture by the International Sculpture Center in 2011.
Find original Frank Stella art for sale on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: London, United Kingdom
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 7 days of delivery.
- Libertinia, from Imaginary PlacesBy Frank StellaLocated in London, GBRelief, screenprint, etching, aquatint, lithograph and engraving in colours, 1995, on TGL handmade paper, signed, dated and numbered form the edition of 50 in pencil (there were als...Category
Late 20th Century Abstract Abstract Prints
MaterialsEngraving, Etching, Aquatint, Lithograph, Screen
- Aiolio, from Imaginary Places IIIBy Frank StellaLocated in London, GBLithograph, screenprint, etching and aquatint printed in colours, with relief, 1998, signed in pencil, dated, numbered from the edition of 51 (there were also twelve artist's proofs)...Category
1990s American Modern Abstract Prints
MaterialsEtching, Aquatint, Lithograph, Screen
- Orofena, from Imaginary Places IIIBy Frank StellaLocated in London, GBLithograph, screenprint, etching and aquatint printed in colours, with relief, 1998, signed in pencil, dated, numbered from the edition of 55 (there were also 14 artist's proofs), wi...Category
1990s American Modern Abstract Prints
MaterialsEtching, Aquatint, Lithograph, Screen
- Suite Catalana, plate 1By Antoni TàpiesLocated in London, GBAquatint in colours, 1972, on Guarro paper, signed and inscribed in pencil aside from the edition of 75, published by Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 75.7 x 100.5 cm. (29.8 x 39.6...Category
1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsAquatint
- Suite Catalana, plate 4By Antoni TàpiesLocated in London, GBAquatint in colours, 1972, on Guarro paper, signed and inscribed in pencil aside from the edition of 75, published by Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 75.7 x 100.5 cm. (29.8 x 39.6...Category
1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsAquatint
- Suite Catalana, plate 2By Antoni TàpiesLocated in London, GBAquatint in colours, 1972, on Guarro paper, signed and inscribed in pencil aside from the edition of 75, published by Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 75.7 x 100.5 cm. (29.8 x 39.6...Category
1970s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsAquatint
- The Pequod Meets the Jeroboam: Her Story from the Moby Dick Deckle Edges SeriesBy Frank StellaLocated in Long Island City, NYTwo whaling ships meet out at sea, one named after an Indigenous American tribe and the other after the first king of the northern Kingdom of Israel, the latter set upon by a malignant epidemic and a sailor gone mad with the belief that he is the Archangel Gabriel. Both ships are plagued, one by sickness and the other by obsession, and neither heeds the warnings of the mad prophet. Built out in layers of paper that have been printed using techniques like lithography and etching, this colossal print by Frank Stella employs careful color against warping black and white grids to give the impression of control slowly slipping and giving way to chaos. Photos don't give this piece proper justice; it is carefully collaged in purposeful layers that constantly pull the eye in every direction and the viewer closer and closer in. The Pequod Meets the Jeroboam: Her Story...Category
1990s Abstract Geometric Abstract Prints
MaterialsMezzotint, Etching, Aquatint, Lithograph
- Plutusia, from Imaginary Places II (Axsom 246). hand signed/N signed COA FRAMEDBy Frank StellaLocated in New York, NYFrank Stella Plutusia, from Imaginary Places II (Axsom & Schnitzer, 246), 1996 52 color lithograph, screenprint, etching, aquatint, relief, mezzotint, engraving on white TGL handmade...Category
1990s Pop Art Abstract Prints
MaterialsFoil
- FragmentBy Noriko YanagisawaLocated in Storrs, CTFragment. 2001. Etching, aquatint and mezzotint. 11 1/2 x 10 3/4 (sheet 20 1/2 x 15). Edition 30, #7. A fine impression printed on the full sheet with deckle edges. Presentation prin...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Abstract Prints
MaterialsAquatint, Mezzotint, Etching
- Buoy Landscape IV, Mixed media signed/n limited edition Ab Ex relief printBy Sam GilliamLocated in New York, NYSam Gilliam Buoy Landscape IV, 1982 Color relief print, etching, screenprint, drypoint, aquatint and roulette all from deeply etched copper plates, on handmade wove paper 31 1/2 × 24 inches Hand signed and numbered 3/25 in graphite pencil Hand-signed by artist, Signed by artist, numbered, and dated in pencil and blind-stamped by printer-publisher on lower right, titled in pencil on lower left, recto Unframed with elegant deckled edges Rare vintage intaglio and relief, all from deeply etched copper plates. Other works from this series are in the permanent collections of major museums & institutions like the Smithsonian, so they are quite scarce on the open market. Steven M. Andersen (Printer) Philip Barber (Printer) Hang Nguyen (Printer) Stephanie Nowack (Printer) Michael Reid (Printer) Daniel Rounds (Printer) Vermillion Editions Limited (Publisher) Sam Gilliam Biography: Sam Gilliam was one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid 1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. A series of formal breakthroughs would soon result in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. Suspending stretcherless lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed. As an artist in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, this was not merely an aesthetic proposition; it was a way of defining art’s role in a society undergoing dramatic change. Gilliam pursued a pioneering course in which experimentation was the only constant. Inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, his lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials. In addition to a traveling retrospective organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 2005, Sam Gilliam was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1982); Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York (1993); J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (1996); Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2011); and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018), among many other institutions. A semi-permanent installation of Gilliam’s paintings opened at Dia:Beacon in August 2019. His work is included in over fifty public collections, including those of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Art Institute of Chicago. Sam Gilliam, Green April, 1969, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 271 x 3 7/8 inches (248.9 x 688.3 x 9.8 cm), Collection of Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland, Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, photography by Lee Thompson...Category
1980s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Prints
MaterialsMixed Media, Pencil, Graphite, Drypoint, Etching, Aquatint, Screen
- Red Grooms American Artist Original Hand Signed lithographBy Red GroomsLocated in Miami, FLAuthor: Red Grooms (United States, 1937) Title: 'Brooklyn bridge bustle', 2002 Medium: Print. Technique: Lithograph on paper Size Image: 22 x 30 in. (55 x 76 cm.) Size Sheet: 27 x 3...Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Abstract Prints
MaterialsPaper, Ink, Engraving, Aquatint, Lithograph, Screen
- Red Grooms American Artist 2002 Original Hand Signed lithographBy Red GroomsLocated in Miami, FLAuthor: Red Grooms (United States, 1937) Title: 'On your mark, get set, go!', 2002 Medium: Limited Edition Print. Technique: Lithograph on paper Image size: 76 x 56.5 cm. (30 x 22 in...Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Abstract Prints
MaterialsPaper, Ink, Engraving, Aquatint, Screen, Lithograph
Recently Viewed
View AllRead More
Get to Know the Artists Who Led the Op Art Movement
In the 1960s and '70s, the hypnotic creations of Op artists went mainstream and influenced the look of pop culture.
Shapero Modern’s Director Tells Us All about 20th-Century Prints
Tabitha Philpott-Kent knows a lot of art multiples. Here, the London gallery director talks about what makes printmaking so fabulous.