Frank Stella

Today our look at color field painters continues...

Because Frank Stella is still alive and painting, I’m not going to say much about his life. He was born in 1936 in Massachusetts. He attended Princeton University where he studied history. He was also interested in art and he visited museums and painted. After graduation he moved to New York where he still lives.

Stella’s paintings are meant to be objects themselves. He does not mean to portray any subject you would recognize and he doesn’t try to paint emotion onto canvas. He wants each painting to be a unique paint-on-canvas (or wood, or aluminum, etc.) object.

Many of Stella’s early paintings are extremely orderly. You’ll notice straight or curved lines that repeat in patterns. For example, look at Sunset Beach Sketch and Harran II. Can you guess which painting Stella created using a protractor?

Stella began painting on strangely shaped canvases which were often better suited to his creations. Check out Sunapee I, for example.

Soon, Stella’s paintings began to take on 3D shapes. He started attaching pieces of canvas to wood and building his paintings outward using aluminum and fiberglass. Look at The Pequod Meets the Bachelor which was made from aluminum and magnesium.

Finally Stella started to create sculpture. Click here for one 10 ton example.

Stella’s paintings can easily be used to review some simple math concepts. Tomorrow I’ll post a fun project that can be enjoyed by elementary school children of any age.

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