FRANK STELLA, PAINTER-PRINTMAKER

Estoril Five 1

FRANK STELLA, PAINTER-PRINTMAKER

by Joan K. Yanni

Frank Stella is one of the most well-regarded postwar American painters who still works today.  He has reinvented himself in consecutive bodies of work over the course of his five-decade career. MAG owns six of his prints. Estoril Five I (84.46) is probably the most significant.

Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1936 and educated at Phillips Academy and Princeton.  He became interested in painting at college, and after graduation in 1957 moved to New York City, rented a studio and supported himself, at least partially, by house painting.

His talent was quickly recognized. His first exhibition came in 1959, and his first solo show followed in 1960 at the Castelli Gallery.  Since then he has appeared in almost every exhibition—national and international—of contemporary abstract painting.

In his earlier years, Stella was determined to create a rational and orderly art in response to the frantic and emotional Abstract Expressionist School.  The "pin stripe" series was the result—canvases with symmetrical 2 1/2-inch black stripes.  His idea was to eliminate illusionistic space and show that a painting was nothing more than a flat surface with paint on it.

He did his paintings in series.  He began to cut notches out of the centers, corners and sides of his canvases so that the shape of the paintings would become part of the design.  L's, T's, and geometrical shapes replaced the usual rectangular form of the picture.

After his black series, he gave color a primary role, with geometric shapes painted in brilliant shades of fluorescent paint.  His geometric shapes seemed to move back and forth in space, and thus he returned to

three-dimensional illusions.  Next he experimented with color combinations, and his paintings became

larger, often ten to twenty feet in width.  Some of his recent works—paintings or sculptures?—are a combination of canvas and wood and actually extend out from the wall by five inches or more. In many of his works French curves, S-curves, protractors, and other architects' tools can be seen.

Stella's interest in printmaking began in 1967, during a time when recognized painters and master printers began to collaborate in a revival of lithography.  He met printer Kenneth Tyler and they joined in producing a number of print series based on his paintings.  Stella did the design, Tyler the printing.  The black series paintings had been done in 1958-59; the black series prints were done in 1967.

Our Estoril Five I is one of his Circuit (race track circuit) series, named after race tracks: Estoril (Portugal), Imola (Sicily), and Talladega (Alabama).  Stella has always been interested in auto racing.  He designed a BMW racing car in 1976, and traveled with the BMW Formula II racing team from Munich to Sicily.  He did a Race Track series of prints in 1972 and the Circuits in 1982.  Each of his Circuit prints is done in more than one version, thus Estoril Five I, with a variety of plates and colors.

Our print was created in five steps on handmade paper, from a beech woodblock and four magnesium plates.  The paper was made under Stella’s supervision at the Tyler Graphics workshop, where. each sheet was hand colored with a series of nine liquid dyes ranging from lime green and pale orange to blue and magenta.  In Step 1: the printing was done with the routed beech woodblock in transparent yellow to allow the paper color to show through.  Step 2: a metal plate was used to print in red, yellow, yellow-orange, pale orange, spring green and turquoise blue.  Step 3: a second metal plate with light ocher was pressed over the yellow of step 2.  Step 4: a thin, line plate was used to print in purple.  Step 5: dark ocher was added over the yellow and light ocher, and, finally, a black border was printed around the work.

In 2009 Stella was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.