Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker who played a key role in the Minimalism movement. Stella went to New York to paint in 1958 and achieved almost immediate recognition for his work. Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum included a number of his paintings in their 1959 exhibit, Three Young Americans. In the same year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited his work in Sixteen Americans, and he gained the representation and patronage of prominent collector, Leo Castelli. … (read more)

Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker who played a key role in the Minimalism movement. Stella went to New York to paint in 1958 and achieved almost immediate recognition for his work. Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum included a number of his paintings in their 1959 exhibit, Three Young Americans. In the same year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited his work in Sixteen Americans, and he gained the representation and patronage of prominent collector, Leo Castelli.

It was some of Stella's earliest works, notably the Black Paintings of 1958-1960, that launched Stella's name into the limelight of abstract painting and buoyed his 1960 series, the Aluminum Paintings, which showed at the Leo Castelli Gallery, and his subsequent Copper Paintings. From the late 50's through the mid 70's Stella was to be considered at the very forefront of the abstract painting movement. "Abstraction is what I like, and it’s what I feel I should do. I feel left with it. I feel responsible."

Through the 70's, aluminum was one of the mainstays of his work. During the 80's and 90's Stella created a significant body of work in response to Moby Dick, and the artist gravitated toward more the three-dimensional, creating sculptural forms from paint. It was in the 90's that Stella began work in free-standing sculptures and architecture, including the Prince of Wales Theater in Toronto in 1992-1993. Stella continues to live and work in New York.

Watch a video on Frank Stella's Design process for the BMW Art Car:

Watch a 1972 video with Frank Stella discussing his work:

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