Frank Stella: A Retrospective, New York

Published by ARTAND, 2015

-

Cover image: Installation view, with The Blanket (IRS-8, 1.875X) at far left and The Whiteness of the Whale (IRS-8, 1.875X) at far right. Photo by Ronald Amstut courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art.

Occupying the entirety of the fifth floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art is ‘Frank Stella: A Retrospective,’ the most comprehensive survey of the pioneering American artist to date. Most well-known for his large, bold, minimalist paintings, this exhibition covers the entirety of Stella’s career including his very recent sculptures.

With a career that spans almost sixty years, Stella is regarded as one of the most important living American artists. Having grown up in Massachusetts, Stella moved to New York in 1958. Here, he was influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement and began his formalist approach to painting with emphasis on repetition and the two-dimensional nature of the picture-plane. Stella’s large monochromatic canvases are now canonical in the history of post-war American art history and have been widely influential across the world. His signature aesthetic can even be found in Sydney; Stella collaborated with renowned Australian architect Harry Seidler for Grosvenor Place; his ginormous, colourful works from the series ‘Cones and Pillars’ burst forward from the grey interiors of the skyscraper.

‘Frank Stella: A Retrospective,’ which features around a hundred works, will be Stella’s first retrospective in the US since 1987. Although he may be most well-known for his paintings, the exhibition will also encompass his drawings, reliefs, sculptures and maquettes.

Frank Stella: A Retrospective
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York
30 October 2015 - 7 February 2016