1960s Frank Stella

Details

Description

Author: William S. Rubin (then Director of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA)

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York

… Read more Author: William S. Rubin (then Director of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA)

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Publication Date: 1970 (First Edition)

Time Period Context: Mid-Century Modern / Post-Painterly Abstraction. This book was published to anchor Frank Stella's legendary 1970 retrospective exhibition at MoMA. At just 34 years old, Stella was the youngest artist ever honored with a full-scale retrospective at the museum.

Dimensions: Approximately 10" x 9.25" (Square 4to format).

Length: 174 pages, featuring 83 illustrations (including 18 vibrant color plates). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

Cover Art & Visual Description

The striking cover art features a design adapted from Frank Stella's famous Protractor Series (specifically closely matching works like Flin Flon or Raqqa). This period of Stella's career marked a massive shift away from his early, minimalist "Black Paintings" toward grand, sweeping curves, interlacing fluorescent pigments, and intricately shaped canvases. The design is characterized by its overlapping semicircles forming a colorful, symmetrical, flower-like geometric abstraction. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] See less