BIOGRAPHY
Print maker and painter Frank Stella was born on May 12, 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts. He attended high school in Massachusetts and, upon graduating, moved on to Princeton University and majored in history. Stella soon found himself influenced by figures the likes of Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock while in school, and visits to the art galleries of New York subtly shaped Stella’s techniques.
In 1958 Stella graduated from Princeton and moved to New York City, where he found himself in opposition to the number of painters who used their medium in an expressive manner when working towards abstract expressionism. He preferred somewhat flatter surfaces, the likes of which were to be found in the work of Barnett Newman and Jasper Johns. Soon enough Stella began painting in such a way as to emphasize identification of the objects in his paintings as the objects themselves, not just an expression of those objects. In other words his work was readily identifiable as what it was supposed to represent.
During this time Stella did two things. First, he stated his belief that a painting was a “flat surface with paint on it – nothing more”. This would set the tone for all his work thereafter, as it defied the convention of doing a sketch of the soon-to-be picture beforehand. And, second,Stella married art critic Barbara Rose in 1961. They would remain together for eight years before separating in 1969.
Stella’s work attained recognition for its uniqueness and level of skill as early as 1959, when he had not even reached the age of 25. By 1960 he was reproducing paintings with aluminum and copper paint. He had a fine sense for geometry and many of his early paintings used straight or curved lines, often in arcs, to excess.
By the mid-1960’s Stella found himself branching off in to a new medium, however: print making. He began working with printer Kenneth Tyler and soon enough produced his first set of abstract prints, utilizing screen printing, etching and lithography, among other mediums. By 1970 he received a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, the youngest artist to ever receive such an honor.Many of his prints incorporated several different techniques to create one unique effect. It was inevitable, then, that in 1973 he had a print shop installed into his home in New York.
The mid 1980’s onwards saw Stella working in three dimensions with increasing frequency, and by the 1990’s he’d moved on to creating free-standing sculptures for display in public places. One of his crowning achievements is the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto, for which Stella provided the decorative scheme that has made the theater so popular.
Stella is still an active artist in New York