Frank Stella
Brozozdowce III (1973)
Brozozdowce III (1973), by Frank Stella (Click an Image for High Resolution)
Frank Stella is a second-generation Italian-American born in Malden, Massachusetts. After receiving his Princeton University BA in 1958, Stella rented a storefront on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and began making paintings of symmetrical black stripes on canvas with ordinary house paint. These "black paintings" became milestones in 1960s Minimalism, a movement that attempted to downplay the artist's role through an emphasis on pure form and color.
By the 1970s, artists like Stella, challenged categories like painting and sculpture by creating hybrids of both. He was also among those artists involved in the Art Strike Against War, Repression, and Racism that brought artists' voices into the political realm. Stella was a radical who experimented with non-traditional materials like fabrics and plastics and painted constructions that used "real" space rather than its illusion. The initial result was his 1973 "Polish Village" series, the first of several large wall-hung works.
York College’s Brzozdowce III is one in that series titled, as were others in the 40-piece series, after a village where the Nazis destroyed a wooden synagogue during WWII.1 Stella was a skilled draftsman who systematically created designs on paper before building the final three-dimensional artwork. He used geometry "to distill the image to paint and canvas alone."2 Brzozdowce III hangs like a gigantic puzzle, but the angular silhouette of an A-frame building is visible.
The Museum of Modern Art mounted two major Stella expositions in 1970 and 1987. Numerous museums throughout the world have Frank Stella’s art in their permanent collections. Among the several honors to his credit, in 1983, Harvard University named Stella the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, an honor previously bestowed on Igor Stravinsky and T.S. Eliot. Yet, when asked what he has yet to accomplish, Stella responds without hesitation: "I'd like to build one building."
Links to Related Content (links open in a new window)
- The Guggenheim's biography of Frank Stella - Frank Stella is one of the very important American artists of the 20th century. This biography is extensive in discussing Stella's career as a painter, graphic artist and sculptor. (http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_148.html)
- The treatment of Stella's work at Artnet - This site illustrates numerous examples of Frank Stella’s work. It also includes a chronological biography and a list of his exhibitions. (http://www.artnet.com/artist/16079/Frank-Stella.html)
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art - This site illustrates Frank Stella's innovative painting The Dart, which was made of enamel on aluminum. It discusses the multiple forms and materials which Stella utilized in his art. (http://www.metmuseum.org/special/stella/painting_view_1.asp?item=10)
- the-artists.org - This website, "a database of 20th Century and contemporary visual artists," includes Stella in its collection. The Stella page shows many illustrations of Frank Stella's work. (http://the-artists.org/artist/Frank_Stella.html)
- New York Times Topics (Frank Stella) - The Times Topics section contains "archival material on more than 14,000 subjects. Each topic page collects all the news, reference and archival information, photos, graphics, audio and video files." The page on Stella includes an extensive selection of articles dealing with Frank Stella's career.
Notes
- Phillip Leider, "Stella Since 1970," Art In America (March/April 1978). Brzozdowce III was included in the exhibition of the same name which began at Fort Worth Museum and traveled to eight other venues.
- Lucy R. Lippard, ed., "Questions to Stella and Judd (Interview by Bruce Glaser)," ArtNews (Sept. 1966).
