Frank Stella

Private Collection, New York

This work is in very good condition overall. Please refer to the following condition report prepared by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.
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From the first steps of his career, Frank Stella, painting’s logician, had little interest in carrying the torch of the Abstract Expressionists. Reflecting on that period, Stella noted in 1966, “I began to feel very strongly about finding a way that wasn’t so wrapped up in the hullabaloo … something that was stable in a sense, something that wasn’t constantly a record of your sensitivity, a record of flux.” Paintings were not the place of personal indulgence, but a site for solving problems inherent to painting. Stella sought to reestablish the autonomy of the canvas as a physical object through the application of a rigorous visual logic and explored each successive motif by adopting a strategy of seriality.

After a controversial introduction to the art world with his Black Paintings, Stella soon found himself enjoying critical praise even if financial rewards remained elusive until 1967 with his Protractor series. The Protractor series’ introduction of curves into Stella’s oeuvre was the logical progression from his many straight-edged and angled canvases. In the series, Stella constructed elaborate compositions through rainbow, fan, and protractor forms, drastically expanded his color palette and created a variety of complex color combinations. While some have argued that this structural and chromatic expansion represented a breakdown in Stella’s visual logic, many others saw it as an opening up of possibilities and additional areas for exploration.

Stella’s color choices for Composition make it one of the most unusual pieces in the Protractor series and arguably reference his first Black Paintings. The fluorescent colors used throughout the series distinguish it from the limited palettes of previous works. As arranged, the decorative interior patterns reveal the influence of Islamic art as do the titles of the complete arrangements derived from names of ancient cities in Asia Minor. His use of a red canvas in Composition alone would represent a significant break from the almost exclusively white canvases of the series, but the rarity of this decision is increased by the selection of black for the framing element.

It is Stella’s extensive use of black here that recalls the earlier Black Paintings, and, in particular, Getty Tomb (1959). The earlier work was inspired by architect Louis Sullivan’s famous mausoleum that generates its power and monumentality, like that of Composition, through the juxtaposition of banded arcs against the rectilinear forms.

Structurally, Composition, which rigorously follows Stella’s pattern for the particular unit, is perhaps the most singularly autonomous in the entire series due to the framing element along the canvas’ edge. Stella intended for this frame to lie in the same two-dimensional space as the arcs, however the viewer’s eye naturally follows the curves and completes the sweep of the arcs beneath the frame and out of sight. The intersection of the arcs assures that neither can assert dominance over the other nor create illusionistic depth and the broad color fields painted directly on the canvas further flatten the arrangement.