Frank Stella, Who Reinvented Abstraction, Dies at 87

Frank Stella, who died in May 2024 aged 87, burst onto the scene as a young man with austere 'Black Paintings' of plain pinstripes — works that declared, in his famous phrase, 'what you see is what you see'.

But Stella never stood still. Over six decades he exploded outward into shaped canvases, blazing colour and wild, jutting reliefs that leapt off the wall into sculpture.

From minimalist to maximalist, he kept reinventing what a painting could be. Few American artists ranged so far, or stayed so relentlessly curious.

Image: “Whitney Museum of American Art (49051573133)” — Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.