The artist who made Abstraction physical
Week Nineteen is Raspberry, Apple Green, Melon & Terracotta
Not long to go now… The Colori Flori Summit kicks off with some BONUS content this coming weekend to get us in the mood a fortnight of colourful creativity. This is free for everyone to view and will be available here on Substack. I hope you will join us.
The Summit itself runs from 18—31 May with the Early Bird pricing until the first lesson is released at 9am on Monday 18 May.
Have a look below to find out more about all the wonderful artists participating and what they will be teaching in their lessons.
It would have Frank Stella’s birthday this week so the Coloricombo colours and shapes are chosen from this America painter, sculptor and printmaker’s works.
Stella (1936-2024) was born in Malden, Massachusetts and moved to New York in the late 1950s after studying history at Princeton.
When he arrived, the art scene was very much awash with Abstract Expressionism - think Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning & Franz Kline. The ‘gesture-and-emotion’ approach to painting, where canvas was treated as a site for action instead of just a surface, dominated the conversation.
Stella arrived in a New York that had taken over from Paris as the centre of the Western art world and the energy at the time was intense. Stella however wasn’t interested in pouring his feelings into a painting and instead was drawn to to the work of Jasper Johns, who’s Flag and Target series of paintings used repetition and geometric precision, solid lines depicting recognisable shapes and forms.
At aged twenty two, Stella bought some commercial enamel paint and a housepainters brush, drew guidelines with a pencil and ruler, then and started painting black stripes of the same width, evenly spaced on raw canvas. These became the Black Paintings, and when four of them were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959, people paid attention.
He continued working in this style, albeit with colour added, in the 1960s when he took up printmaking. Stella never considered himself a Minimalist, although his work influence the movement greatly, and in the 1970s he started working with more gentle, coloured mixed media reliefs that featured curves and organic shapes, such as the Exotic Bird series.
In the late 70s and early 80s His work became increasingly 3D and began to incorporate architectural forms and materials such as aluminium and fibreglass and from the mid 80s to mid 90s he created an enormous body of work, corresponding to chapters in the novel Moby Dick. These were a definite departure from his earliest works with geometric forms curving and swirling, layered in collage form in incredibly vibrant colours.
Stella’s achievement include being the youngest artist ever to be granted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and being honoured with the National Medal of Arts in 2009. His evolution showed that Minimalism didn’t have to be cold, that geometry could have emotion and that architecture could be incorporated into art.
This is impressive for someone who once said that every painting is "a flat surface with paint on it - nothing more".
You can watch this video of his work and read more about Stella here and here. Take a look at the progression from the Exotic Bird series to Moby Dick here and here.
I’ve chosen colours this week from a simple swatch of Stella’s and shapes from an Exotic Bird painting.
“Untitled”, acrylic and pencil on paper, Frank Stella, 1968
Colour Combination
The colours this week are Raspberry, Apple Green, Melon & Terracotta. Use them along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour to create an artwork in any medium or style. Know someone who might enjoy a weekly dollop of colour and creativity? Please share this post with them.
Shapes
“Stella’s Albatross”, offset lithograph and screen print, Frank Stella, 1977
Along with the colour prompt I am including some shapes inspired by a Stella’s Albatross painting which you can download as a PDF and print out to use as you wish.
