Frank Stella was born in 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts.

 After 
attending high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, 
Massachusetts, he went on to Princeton University, where he painted 
and majored in history. Early visits to New York art galleries would 
prove to be an influence upon his artistic development. Stella moved 
to New York in 1958 after his graduation. 
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/frank­stella

The American painter and printmaker got early praise for his interesting moderate style of Abstract
Expressionism, based on his series of Black Paintings (1958-60), in which dark stripes were isolated
by thin lines. In 1959, some of his theoretical artworks were incorporated into The Three Young
Americans show at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, while a few were also
included in the Sixteen Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. From his Black
Paintings, Stella moved onto the Aluminum Paintings (1960) and
the Copper Paintings (1960-61), for which he created his own geometrically
shaped canvases, challenging the traditional rectangular format.
http://www.visual-arts-
cork.com/famous-artists/frank-
stella.htm

INFLUENCES ON ARTISTS

Jackson Pollock

Barnett Newman
 Jasper Johns

Hans Hofmann

Caravaggio

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-stella-
frank.htm

Retrospective Exhibitions and Collections

Frank Stella's paintings have been the subject of several important retrospectives in
Europe and Japan, as well as the United States, and he is represented in a number of
the world's best art museums. In 1983-4, at the invitation of Harvard University, he
delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures. His six talks were published by Harvard
University Press in 1986.

http://www.visual-arts-
cork.com/famous-artists/frank-
stella.htm
Stella was highly inventive in combining different things into a single work. In many of his pieces, he
constructed the printing plate by collecting leftover pieces of metal that resulted from cutting
magnesium shapes to affix to his paintings. He would collage them onto a single support, then etch or
engrave additional lines into the metal. Many of his prints involved dozens of impressions, as he used
different colors, changed processes, and maybe drew or painted over the top to finish it off, which the
curator says "makes it difficult to even categorize the work as a print.
Ain Ghazal Variation, 1999

To make his Shards series, Stella cut up lithography plates from an earlier series and reassembled
them. The grid pattern recurs throughout his work.
Shards III, 1982
Plutusia, 1996

He uses lithography, screen printing, etching, aquatint, relief, mezzotint and engraving. It required 39
press runs for its five aluminium plates, four screens, and a mega plate collaged from 22 shaped
magnesium plates, 11 shaped copper plates, one plastic plate and two zinc plates. He loves to find
miscellaneous pieces of things and use them for art.

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-stella-frank.htm

Stella has constantly fought the rules and regulations of the

painted surface, and even the medium, using house and car
paint, cast aluminum, fiberglass, and the latest 3-D-printing
techniques. In the last three decades, he’s only increased
his experimental approach with sculptural works that near a
state of architecture in their vertiginous balance and scale.
https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/frank-stella#slideshow_47267