Frank Stella, Gobba, zoppa e collorto (1985), from “Frank Stella: A Retrospective” (2015-2016) at the Whitney Museum.

The art world mourns the loss of pioneering artist, Frank Stella (1936-2024), who was known for working with a myriad of mediums, including painting, sculpture and printmaking. He was, and continues to be, one of the most influential figures of contemporary art. His way of reinventing and reinterpreting artistic mediums defined him as a visionary, unable to be easily corralled or categorized by his chosen industry. 

 

Revered for redefining mediums and breaking molds, Stella not only developed a style of minimalist painting that emphasized the objectivity of paintings, but also blurred the lines between painting and sculpture. In the 1960’s he began creating design-based paintings on shaped canvases, freeing the artform from its once rigid rectangular confines, which is easily recognizable in his piece Harran II (1967). 

Frank Stella, Harran II, 1967, from “Frank Stella: A Retrospective” (2015-2016) at the Whitney Museum.

Similarly, Stella’s ‘Moby Dick’ series, spanning from the 1980’s through the 1990’s, was equally subversive and even more ambitious. Creating a body of work named after characters from Melville’s famous novel, he explored the intersectionality between paintings, lithographs, and sculptures to create one cohesive boundary-pushing entity. His way of consistently reinventing and reinterpreting artistic mediums defined him as a visionary who could not be easily corralled or simply categorized by his chosen industry. 

 

Unlike many other prolific artists, Stella’s talent was recognized early on in his career. Having studied under artist Patrick Morgan as a teenager in Andover, MA, and later mentored by painter Stephen Greene and art historian William Seitz at Princeton University, Stella was thrust into the New York art scene almost seamlessly. He began creating upon his move to Manhattan, creating his first series, the ‘Black Paintings’, between 1958-1959. In 1959, Stella’s pieces were included in exhibitions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College and the Museum of Modern Art in New York later that year. In 1970, he became the youngest artist to ever receive a retrospective exhibition at MoMA at 34 years old. In recent years, his artwork embraced technology, utilizing the computer as an artistic tool that enabled the creation of his series of star-shaped sculptures; his piece Jasper’s Split Star (2021) was installed at 7 World Trade Center the same year of its creation.

Frank Stella, La penna di hu (1987-2009), from “Frank Stella: A Retrospective” (2015-2016) at the Whitney Museum.

In addition to being a practicing artist, Frank Stella was also an active member of the Artists Rights Society, for which he published on Op-Ed in 2008 for The Arts Newspaper opposing a proposed law that would negatively impact artists and creatives by removing certain copyright penalties. One year later he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by former President Barack Obama. 

 

In a famous interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross from 2000, Stella said: “I always liked paint – the physicality of it.” In retrospect, this quote seems the most fitting and appropriate way to understand him as an artist – that the message of his work was a representation of the medium itself, not the other way around.

All images via Art Observed.

-O.Wrobleski

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