Born: 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts. Nationality: American. Died 2024

Frank Stella studied at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts (1950-54) and at Princeton University (1954-58) where he was awarded a B.A. degree in History while also attending painting courses there.

After graduation he moved to New York where he began to produce minimalist, abstract paintings gaining early acclaim for his series of ‘black paintings’, geometric arrangements of black lines painted on raw canvas. Four of these were included in the exhibition ‘Sixteen Americans’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1959 when Stella was only 23 years old.

During the 1960s he began to experiment with curvilinear shapes and a greater range of colour; sometimes using shaped canvasses, some with deep relief features, introducing a sculptural element (which Stella referred to as his ‘maximalist’ paintings). By the 1980s and 1990s the desire to further exploit three-dimensionality led to large-scale, elaborately shaped, aluminium sculptures painted with exuberant colour, echoing the visual impact of advertising hoardings and evoking the urgent messages of contemporary consumer culture.

In the 1960s and 70s printmaking had become an important aspect of his art practice, mainly using the techniques of lithography and screen-printing. Typical examples are the two works in the Warwick collection.

Stella’s prolific exhibiting career has included major galleries throughout the world and continues to the present day (2021) and his work can be seen in many key international public art collections. He has received a number of prestigious awards including the New York Mayor's Award for Arts (1981),the Ordre des Arts et Lettres from the French Government (1989) and in 2009 he was presented with the National Medal of Arts(US) by President Barrack Obama.

 

	Untitled (Striped Diagonally)
	Hyena Stomp