Artist 23: Frank Stella

Frank Stella is an American painter born in 1936 in Massachusetts.  While in high school at Phillips Academy he started taking painting classes and then went on to Princeton University to earn a degree in history, all the while taking painting classes.  On trips to New York galleries he was exposed to many different artists that were critical to his personal development in art.  Once Stella graduated from Princeton he moved to the Lower East Side of New York and set up his gallery in a former jewelry shop.  Unlike the traditional abstract expressionists he used a monochromatic palette and a flat application of paint.  Stella’s early works were seen as very minimalist, they emphasized the form rather than the content.  At the age of 23 he was widely known for his pinstripe parallel patterns.  Later in his career he began to create his own geometrically shaped canvases, which challenged the traditional format.  He also moved from his pinstripes to complex circles and used brighter colors.  At this time Stella also began jumping into printmaking.  In 1970 he was the youngest artist to have a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, 17 years later he received a second retrospective and was the first to ever receive a second.  In the 1980s and 1990s while continuing his work in printmaking he also expanded his three dimensional pieces.  He then moved into free standing bronze and steel sculptures, this then led to his work in architectural structures.  He now lives in New York and continues to make large-scale sculptures and does designs for potential architectural projects.