Frank Stella, painter, sculptor and graphic artist, died on Saturday at the age of 87, the AP reported. His constantly evolving works are considered landmarks of minimalist art and post-painterly abstraction.
Stella's wife, Harriet McGurk, told the New York Times that the cause of the artist's death was lymphoma.
Frank Stella – who was he?
Born on May 12, 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, Stella attended Princeton University and moved to New York in the late 1950s.
During this time, many prominent American artists embraced abstract expressionism, but Stella began to explore minimalism. At the age of 23, he created a series of flat black striped paintings, also resembling a grid, using house paint and exposed canvas, which received wide critical acclaim.
From the beginning of the 1960s, he also experimented with the shape of canvases. His works also fit into the hard-edge painting trend.
The most important work of Frank Stella is considered “Black Paintings”, for which he received the award. Alexej von Jawlensky awarded every five years by the city of Wiesbaden. “This work 'negates any conventional notion of color and form,'” the award jury wrote in its justification.
In the USA, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts, established in 1984 by the United States Congress, awarded to artists and patrons of the arts. In 2016, the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw presented the artist's solo exhibition entitled “Frank Stella and the Synagogues of Old Poland”.
Main photo source: Jakub Kamiński/PAP