Frank Stella was one of the most influential American artists of post-war abstract art. With his early Black Paintings and later Irregular Polygons and Protractor series, he played an important role in the development of Minimalism and the shaped canvas. The artwork increasingly asserted itself as a physical object.
From the 1960s onwards Stella also produced a substantial body of prints, while his work developed from rigorous geometry towards colourful reliefs, sculptures and monumental projects. In 1970 he was already the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His sustained investigation of form, space and material made him a key figure in American art of the second half of the twentieth century.
