Posted on September 29, 2004 at 2:48 p.m.
BIRMINGHAM, AL — A new sculpture by world-renowned artist Frank Stella will be installed in the Alys Stephens Center’s Engel Plaza October 13-14, with Stella overseeing the installation.
The sculpture, constructed of stainless steel, aluminum, painted fiberglass and carbon fiber, measures 18 feet tall and 12 feet wide and will take center stage in the circle just outside of the Abroms Patrons Lounge. The gift is possible through the generous support of Marvin and Ruth Engel. The sculpture, which will be owned and cared for by the Birmingham Museum of Art, will enhance the exterior of the Alys Stephens Center, creating a focal point for the Engel Plaza.
Born in Malden, Massachusetts, Frank Stella first studied art at the Phillips Academy, Andover. He continued his studies at Princeton University. After graduating he moved to New York City, where he supported himself by painting houses.
Stella’s explorations began with his series of black “pin-stripe” paintings, which created a furor in the New York art world in 1959. That year, at age 23, he was the youngest artist included in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition “Sixteen Americans.” Stella’s method of working systematically in a series emphasized his problem-solving approach to painting. He arranged flat color fields into repetitive, geometric patterns and created all-over, non-illusionistic surfaces. His logic, control, and extreme reductionism prefigured minimalism.
Stella continued working in an austere style through the early 1960s, but gradually his canvases assumed curvilinear shapes and a bright palette. In the 1970s he moved from works on flat surfaces to compositions that projected out from the wall. First Stella made collages, then shallow reliefs and finally fully spatial constructions like the “Circuit” series. While the scale and size of Stella’s works have become grander, the process has become more spontaneous. The artist continues to push the relationship of figure and ground to the point of minimizing the ground. The result is sculptural.
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