Frank Stella American, b. 1936
Works
Biography
Then Came Death and Took the Butcher, from Illustrations After El Lissitzky's Had Gadya, 1984
Frank Stella is considered one of the most influential American artists of the post-war generation. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, he helped shepherd painting beyond Abstract Expressionism and towards Minimalism. Stella’s output has evolved from black-and-white striped paintings (which he created at the start of his career), to the irregularly shaped canvases of his bold 1970s “Polish Village” series, to the 3D-printed sculptures he produced in the 2010s. While the artist has a reputation for stylistic innovation, he views all of his works as part of a continuum. Stella cemented his place in art history in 1970 when, at age 33, he became the youngest artist to ever mount a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. He has since enjoyed major solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Kunstmuseum Basel, among other institutions, and his work belongs in public collections worldwide. His pieces regularly sell for seven figures at auction.