Frank Stella - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, November 13, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York; Private Collection

  • Catalogue Essay


    Born May 12, 1936, in Malden, Massachusetts, Frank Stella completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Princeton University in 1958. Since Princeton did not at the time offer a degree in studio art, Stella’s artistic development was due mainly to self-teaching. Stella’s first group exhibition of significance opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959. Due to immense notoriety for his Black Paintings, Frank Stella was henceforth established as one of the most radical young artists working in the United States. One year later, the artist opened his first one man show in New York City.
    Stella’s series of Brazilian Pictures, begun in 1975, marked deviation from the tightness of his early work. A freer, more painterly approach to drawing initialized his Exotic Birds series commencing in 1976. The artist continued with his Indian Birds series in 1977. The present lot, Brazilian Merganser executed in 1980, exemplifies the culmination of styles explored by the artist. Stella’s previous reservations as to the use of the rectangular ground are unapparent as the curves in relief – often referred to as French curves, or suggestive of the musical G clefs – are properly supported compositionally. Brazilian Merganser illustrates Frank Stella’s repeated use of collage, aluminum, high and low relief, and hot colors in his later work.
    “Insofar as the multiple curvilinear forms in the Exotic Birds want a foil, they seem to have confirmed Stella’s return to a straightedge rectangular picture field, which the artist thought necessary to support the irregular curves. The play of the curved planes against this more regular rectilinear ground to which they were attached constituted a form of figure-ground relationship, a pictorial convention that Stella had heretofore largely avoided” (W. Rublin, Frank Stella 1970 – 1987, New York, 1987, p.68).

  • Artist Biography

    Frank Stella

    American • 1936 - N/A

    One of the most important living artists, Frank Stella is recognized as the most significant painter that transitioned from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism. He believes that the painting should be the central object of interest rather than represenative of some subject outside of the work. Stella experimented with relief and created sculptural pieces with prominent properties of collage included. Rejecting the normalities of Minimalism, the artist transformed his style in a way that inspired those who had lost hope for the practice. Stella lives in Malden, Massachusetts and is based in New York and Rock Tavern, New York.

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35

Brazilian Merganser

1980
Oil, glitter, oilstick, and aluminum on Tycore.
85 x 61 in. (215.9 x 154.9 cm).

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for $116,500

Contemporary Art Part I

13 Nov 2008, 7pm
New York