Frank Philip Stella (1936 - 2024)

Biography

Frank Philip Stella (May 12, 1936 – May 4, 2024) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. He lived and worked in New York City for much of his career before moving his studio to Rock Tavern, New York. Stella's work catalyzed the minimalist movement in the late 1950s. He moved to New York City in the late 1950s, where he created works which emphasized the picture-as-object. These were influenced by the abstract expressionist work of artists like Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. He developed a reductionist approach to his art, saying he wanted to demonstrate that for him, every painting is "a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more", and disavowed conceptions of art as a means of expressing emotion. He won notice in the New York art world in 1959 when his four black pinstripe paintings were shown at the Museum of Modern Art. Stella was a recipient of the National Medal of Arts in 2009 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture by the International Sculpture Center in 2011.