It is with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to one of the most influential artists of the 20th century: Frank Stella passed away a few days ago at the age of 87.

Stella initially sought to reduce his work to a minimum. He explained himself as follows: "All I want to take from my paintings [...] is that you can see the whole idea without any confusion." In contrast to this, his paintings work with all-over painting, a principle that he continuously repeated in his early Black Paintings until the painted lines reach the limits of the canvas and ultimately even "leave" the canvas from the 1960s onwards.

Our gallery worked intensively with the renowned American painter and sculptor Frank Stella, not only for our last major solo exhibition, but also until shortly before his death. Stella's work shaped the art history of the 20th century and is represented internationally in the most important museums, collections and public spaces.

Frank Stella and Alexander Baumgarte in the redesigned entrance hall of Axel Springer, Hamburg

Frank Stella was born on May 12, 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts. From 1950 to 1954, he studied at Phillips Academy in Andover under the abstract painter Patrick Morgan. Stella then studied history at Princeton University from 1954 to 1958, where he also attended William C. Seitz's open painting class. From 1958, Frank Stella had a studio in New York, where he earned his living as a painter. His early paintings in New York were oriented towards Abstract Expressionism. In 1958, Frank Stella saw an exhibition of Jasper Johns' “Flags” and “Targets” paintings at Leo Castelli's gallery, which impressed him. A few months later, Frank Stella switched from gestural abstraction to a reduced, conceptual style of painting. He created his first “Black Paintings”, large-format canvases covered with a symmetrical pattern of black stripes. Soon afterwards, Stella also began to adapt the form of the canvas support to the inner structure of his paintings. The canvas can now take on any geometric, and later asymmetric, shape. In 1960/61, this led to the series of aluminum and copper paintings and the “Shaped Canvases”, which lend Frank Stella's paintings the character of objects. From 1971, Frank Stella worked on the “Polish Villages” series. These large-format collages made of paper, felt, canvas, plywood, formica and aluminum, whose titles refer to destroyed Polish synagogues, mark the transition from painting to relief. From the mid-1970s, he created large, brightly colored reliefs, mostly made of aluminum and fiberglass, composed of geometric shapes. From 1980, Frank Stella also worked on extensive graphic cycles, such as the “Circuits”, the “Shards” or the series of “Cones and Pillars”, the latter corresponding to a relief series of the same name. From the beginning of the 1990s, the artist also conquered three-dimensional space with sculptural works that could be moved, relief friezes and outdoor sculptures.
Frank Stella is regarded as one of the most important American artists of the post-war period and his works are shown in numerous major exhibitions. The first retrospective took place in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has also received numerous honorary titles and awards, including honorary membership of the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem in 1981 and an honorary doctorate from Princeton University in 1984, and in 1996 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Jena. Frank Stella last lived and worked in New York. He died on May 04, 2024.