Frank Stella Hon RA: Courtyard Sculpture

Exhibited in the UK for the first time, Inflated Star and Wooden Star has been fabricated from aluminium and teakwood. Conceived digitally, the image is modelled and refined by Stella to the verge of minimalism before it goes into production. The contrasting materials employed in the sculpture, the natural wood against the highly finished metal, the differing treatments of space in the line-drawn star and the round curves of the solid star, create a tension and sense of the works being both repelled and attracted to each other at a fixed distance by an invisible force field.

Best known for his abstract painting, prints and sculptures, Stella’s early preoccupation with creating illusions of space within two dimensions has developed and evolved from ‘sculptural wall-based paintings’, to large free standing works that continue to employ his particular language of painting and spatial exploration. After graduating from Princeton University in 1958, Stella moved to New York City, where he absorbed the vibrant contemporary art scene founded by Abstract Expressionist figures such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. By 1970, with his post-painterly, Minimalist vision, Stella became the youngest ever artist to have a retrospective show in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.