Frank Stella
Shards III, from Shards series (Axsom 146)
About the SessionSpanning 4 centuries of global art history, The International Sale, presents 127 exceptional lots by artists from 27 countries across five continents. The auction highlights masterworks ranging from 17th century European paintings to post-2000 editions by contemporary artist's such as Mr Brainwash (lot 51), Jim Dine (lots 83-86), Isaac Julien (lot 108), Jeff Koons (45), and Lucas Samaras (lot 107 and 110). The sale is anchored by important pieces from Georg Baselitz, Erik Laubscher, Shirin Neshat, and a newly repatriated 1935 portrait by Irma Stern.
The auction's diversity is driven by rare museum-quality highlights, led by Irma Stern's Two Women (lot 31), which returns to South Africa after decades in a Berlin private collection. It is joined by Erik Laubscher's rare recto-verso painting Young Family / Construction (lot 48), an Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat photographic portrait linked to her award-winning Turbulent installation (lot 66), and a uniquely hand-coloured linocut by German master Georg Baselitz titled Das Pferd, Im Wald und auf der Heide Series (The Horse, in the Forest and on the Heath Series) (lot 72).
LOT 87
Frank Stella
Shards III, from Shards series (Axsom 146)
About this Item
signed, dated '82 and numbered 24/27 in pencil
Notes
Published and printed by Petersburg Press.
Frank Stella was a post-war American artist born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1936. He is recognised for his innovative use of shape, composition, and colour in his art. Stella studied art at the Phillips Academy in Andover before pursuing a history degree from Princeton University. He graduated in 1958 and moved to New York City.
Stella’s early works were abstract expressionist, but he turned towards minimalism in the late 1950s and early 1960s after being inspired by Jasper Johns. He garnered early acclaim with his Black Paintings series, where he painted straight, thin white stripes on a black background. These works led him to become known as a hard-edge painter. In 1959, at twenty-three, he was the youngest person included in the Sixteen Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (MoMA). In 1970, he became the youngest artist to ever hold a retrospective exhibition at MoMA; he was thirty-four.
As his career progressed, Stella experimented with new canvas shapes, which evolved into works that protruded from the wall, transforming two-dimensional artworks into three-dimensional ones. He also brightened his colour palette, including using fluorescent paints. In the late 1970s, Stella abandoned minimalism for maximalism and started incorporating curves and arabesques into his mixed-media reliefs. His use of media expanded from house and car paint (which reflected his early career as a house and boat painter) to aluminium and fibreglass. In the 1990s he began creating large-scale freestanding sculptures.
Stella was one of the most influential living American artists. He held numerous honours and awards, including the 2009 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. Stella’s works are in countless private and public collections around the world, like the Tate in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, among others.
Literature
Richard Axsom (1983) The Prints of Frank Stella: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1967–1982, New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, cat. no. 146.
Exhibited
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Michigan, Frank Stella: Prints 1967-1982, 25 September to 21 November 1982, another example exhibited.
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