Frank Stella, the distinguished sculptor, painter, and printmaker known for his contributions to the minimalist and post-painterly abstract art movements, died at the age of 87 in his Manhattan home on Saturday.
His death was confirmed by his gallery owner Jefferey Deitch, who confirmed his death with the painter’s family.
As per Stella’s wife Harriet McGurk has revealed to the New York Times that he died of Lymphoma.
Born on May 12, 1936, the painter completed his studies at Princeton University before moving to New York City in the late 1950s.
During a period when many American artists were delving into abstract expressionism, Stella stood out from the crowd by exploring minimalism.
By the age of 23, he created a series of flat, black paintings with gridlike bands & stripes using house paint and exposed canvas that drew widespread acclaim.
Then in the late 1970s, he began incorporating three-dimensionality to his visual art which also included the use of metal and other mixed media which actually blurred the boundary between painting and sculpture.
Later, over next decade, Stella’s works majorly consisted of rigorous structure, but he also began to include curved lines and bright colours. which was reflected in his influential Protractor series. Which was named after the geometry tools that he used to create curved shapes of large-scale paintings.
Speaking about his work Deitch greatly praised the work of Frank Stella and said, “He felt that the work he showed was the culmination of a decades long effort to create new pictorial space and to fuse painting and sculpture.”