Stella first became known as a minimalist with a series of black chalk-striped paintings in the late 1950s, aimed at making the viewer aware of the two-dimensional nature of painting, writes the public service company NPR.
Later, his works became more colorful. The auction house Christie’s describes his late works as “maximalist color riots” and writes that he had a directly revolutionary view of materials: He used both facade paint and car paint as well as fiberglass and 3D printers in his works, and developed an interest in uniting painting and sculpture.
Painted houses and read history
As a youngster, Stella helped her father paint houses and boats. He studied history at Princeton University but then focused on art and was inspired by New York’s minimalists and abstract expressionists.
Already at the age of 23, he made his debut at the prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and ten years later he became the youngest artist to date with a retrospective exhibition at MoMA.
In the 1990s, his work became more three-dimensional and sculptural. According to NPR, the Princeton University Art Museum describes Stella’s Moby Dick series as “his most ambitious artistic undertaking”….which “stretches the boundaries between print, painting and sculpture”.