Frank Stella
1936–2024, based in New York, New York, United States.
Frank Stella was born in 1936 in Malden. At the age of 24, he was included in the defining exhibition, “Sixteen Americans,” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. From the mid-1980s to ’90s, Stella’s work became increasingly sculptural as his canvases gave way to three-dimensional forms derived from cones, pillars, waves, French curves, and decorative architectural elements. To create these works, Stella used computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D printing, a practice that he maintains to this day. He has used his position as a celebrated figure to advocate for artists’ rights, joining ARS in its lobbying efforts for resale royalty.
Born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1936, and based in New York, Stella has produced an extraordinary body of work over the past six decades. He studied painting at Phillips Academy, Andover and Princeton University, graduating in 1958 with a degree in History. Since his first solo gallery exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1960, Stella has exhibited widely throughout the US and abroad. Early in his career, his work was included in a number of significant exhibitions that defined the sphere of post-war art. In addition to “Sixteen Americans” in 1959, he was included in “Geometric Abstraction” and “Structure of Color” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1962 and 1971; “The Shaped Canvas” and “Systemic Painting” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1964-65 and 1966; and Documenta 4, Kassel, in 1968. In 1970, at the age of 34, Frank Stella became the youngest artist ever to receive a full-scale retrospective exhibition at the , New York. He received a second retrospective at the same institution in 1987, which is unprecedented in the museum’s history. The author of many essays and articles exploring painting and abstraction, Stella delivered a lecture series as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at in 1983. He has received honorary degrees from , Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, Dartmouth College, and the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. He has also been the recipient of a great many honors and awards internationally. In 2000, he became the only American artist to be given a solo show at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
