'Star of Persia II', colour lithograph on vellum, 66.5 cm x 81 cm sheet dimension, signed, 67 dated, AP IV/X numbered, dry stamp with copyright mark, dry stamp II numbered, mounted, Provenance: Harcus Krakow Gallery, Boston (gallery label on verso), Literature: Axsom 2; Gemini 47.
Frank Stella was born in 1936 and studied at Princeton University. He is regarded as an important American artist who has devoted himself to colour field painting since the late 1950s/early 1960s - until today. In his work, Stella moved from black and metallic stripes to brightly coloured and complex geometric forms. In his 'shaped canvases' he transferred the rhythmic principle of his colour shapes to the canvas, through this, achieving an innovation in abstract art. He created object-like murals in the shape of semicircles, rectangles or rhomboids, almost monumental in size. Shape and colour are explored by the artist until he even tries to work with objects from the 3D-printer. The star, with its geometric peculiarities, is always a form that Frank Stella likes to take up - but probably not because of his own name. Rather, it is probably because of the vitality of its rhythm and dynamics, as well as the straightforward way in which the lines converge from all directions and escape from the centre again.
