Beschreibung:

PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION Frank Stella Concentric Square 1966 acrylic on canvas 63 x 63 in. (160 x 160 cm)
Provenance Lawrence Rubin, New York Blum Helman Gallery, New York Private Collection, Boston Exhibited Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Collects, October 22, 1987 - February 1, 1987 Video FRANK STELLA 'Concentric Square', 1966 "For Stella the simplicity of the geometrically balanced form of the square allowed him to explore the full range of visual tension that the colors allowed..." Contemporary Art Senior Specialist Zach Miner discusses Frank Stella's 'Concentric Square', 1966. from our 13 November Evening Sale. Catalogue Essay "The concentric square format is about as neutral and as simple as you can get. It's just a powerful pictorial image. It's so goof that you can use it, abuse it, and even work against it to the point of ignoring it. It has a strength that's almost indestructible --- at least for me." Frank Stella 1987 In the mid-twentieth century, Frank Stella pioneered a reductive approach that would later define a generation of Minimalism and Post-Painterly Abstraction. In its purity of form, Concentric Square, from 1966 epitomizes the aesthetics of this groundbreaking vision. In turning away from the subjectivity of Abstract Expressionism and the mysticism of Color Field Painting, Stella’s oeuvre marks a crucial moment in the trajectory of contemporary representation. In Concentric Square, Stella’s radical new composition is executed with startling precision. Devoid of external meaning or symbolism, the painting presents a formal arrangement of concentric squares. Stella’s methodology is exacting: each geometrical ring is painted in flat, unmixed and saturated color. The lines are hard-edged to the point of completely negating any trace of the artist’s paintbrush. Synthetically pure colors – crimson red, blazing orange, saffron yellow, lime green, indigo blue and deep purple – define each strip. The order of the hues is perfectly symmetrical, from the outer edge to the center. Red begins in the very middle and borders the outside. Orange follows, then yellow, then green. Purple is not repeated twice, occupying the central ring of the composition. This arrangement allows the rings to oscillate, radiating out from the center and reverberating back again. Stella’s colors are applied straight from the tube. However, when the tones are perceived in unison by the viewer’s eye they begin to mix and intermingle optically. The relative relationship between one tone and the next makes this work a fascinating study of comparative color. Concentric Square recalls the chromatic experiments of Stella’s contemporary Josef Albers who’s prolific Homage to the Square project constitutes a major exploration of color and its experiential properties. Due to its geometric composition, Concentric Square exudes a sensation of self-contained movement, with vibrations pushing out to the edges of the frame, and tunneling back towards the center. By containing this sort of internal dynamism, the work brings new liveliness to the conventional two-dimensional picture plane. Measuring five feet across and five feet tall, the effect is wholly immersive and physically enticing. The spectator’s eye is pulled inwards to the middle and then outwards to the bounds of the work. After sustained viewing, Concentric Square takes on a mesmerizingly illusionistic effect that evokes the work of Op Artists like Bridget Riley who worked contemporaneously with Stella. By retuning to fundamentals, and rethinking formal relationships, Stella produces something that is altogether new and physically disorientating with Concentric Square. Composition is Stella’s chief concern, and Concentric Square demonstrates his penchant for rationality and his commitment to absolute symmetry. In this work, Stella takes Modernism to its logical extreme, presenting painting as an object stripped of exterior referent. He reflected on his practice: "All I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without