Frank Stella, whose laconic pinstripe “black paintings” of the late 1950s closed the door on Abstract Expressionism and pointed the way to an era of cool minimalism, died on Saturday at his home in the West Village of Manhattan.
Mr. Stella was a dominant figure in postwar American art, a restless, relentless innovator whose explorations of color and form made him an outsize presence, endlessly discussed and constantly on exhibit.
Few American artists of the 20th century arrived with quite his éclat.
He was in his early 20s when his large-scale black paintings — precisely delineated black stripes separated by thin lines of blank canvas — took the art world by storm.
Writing in Art International magazine in 1960, the art historian William Rubin declared himself “almost mesmerized” by the “eerie, magical presence” of the paintings.
Persons:
Frank Stella, Harriet E, McGurk, Stella, William Rubin, “
Organizations:
of, Art International
Locations:
West, of Manhattan