After graduating from the Phillips Academy in Andover and then Princeton University, in free electron, the painter Frank Stella is alternately magnetized by the lyricism of an exacerbated gesturality embodied by a Jackson Pollock or a Franz Kline and by the rigour of acetic inspiration of a Barnett Newman. This double polarity is a major characteristic of his work. When he settles in New York, the city is then the epicentre of art and its market. The artist met many people there, including Jasper Johns and then Robert Rauschenberg.
For his first solo exhibition in 1963, he presented his Black Paintings, which the Museum of Modern Art in New York had included in 1959 in "Sixteen Americans", a collective exhibition. Halfway between image-object and image-representation, Frank Stella's works, often produced in large formats and in a serial manner, very often question the bidirectionality of the painting.
Frank Stella (né en 1936)
The Butcher Came and Slew the Ox, d'après El Lissitzky's "Had Gadya" - 1984
Estimate : 10000 / 15000 €
Frank Stella's works sometimes draw on an ancient cultural heritage such as The Butcher Came and Slew the Ox and Then Came a Fire and Burnt the Stick. These two engravings, published in 60 copies, illustrate passages from a nursery rhyme traditionally sung at the end of the seder (the ritual meal of the Jewish Passover). A mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic, the text consists of ten stanzas, each of which contains a series of calamities that are brought to an end by divine intervention. It was illustrated many times, notably by the figurehead of the Russian Avant-Garde, the painter El Lissitzky (1890-1941).
It was during a visit to the Tel Aviv Museum in 1981 that Frank Stella first saw El Lissitzky's gouaches. He was fascinated by the movement and dynamism of these very simple graphic forms. Back in New York, Stella began working until 1984 on a series of prints illustrating each of the verses of Had Gadya.
Frank Stella (né en 1936)
Then Came a Fire and Burnt the Stick, d'après El Lissitzky's "Had Gadya" - 1984
Estimation : 10000 / 15000 €
Creating abstract works composed of explosions of vivid colours and forms emerging from their frames, he took pleasure in multiplying printing techniques such as lithography, silkscreen printing as well as collage and colouring, in order to give maximum dynamism and rhythm to his compositions.