Frank Stella
(United States of America 1935– )
- Title
- Khurasan Gate variation II
- Year
- 1970
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint on canvas
- Dimensions
-
304.8 x 914.4 x 7.6cm stretcher
- Signature & date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales 1977
- Accession number
- 420.1977
- Copyright
- © Frank Stella/ARS. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney.
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
Immense in scale and rigorous in geometric ordering, 'Khurasan gate variation II' is a major achievement of American minimalist painting. Part of Stella's Protracta series, in which he pushed the genre of the easel picture to architectural dimensions, the work exists both as surface and as solid object. Indeed, the shaped canvases he devised in the 1960s, and continued thereafter to explore, can be seen as attempts to annex sculptural space for two-dimensional practice. Having begun his career in abstract expressionism, the then internationally dominant style, Stella went on to make his reputation with a series of all-black paintings that took their form from the edge of the canvas. The system of repeated striping used in these works has the effect of excluding figural and compositional references, a strategy that was to influence the course of twentieth century art through Donald Judd and other minimalists. For Stella and Judd, the new American painting represented a complete break with the European past. Of all the abstract painters who rose to prominence during this period - among them Morris Louis, also represented in the collection by a major work - Stella has proven the most inventive and enduring. The astonishing visual impact of 'Khurasan gate' goes a long way towards explaining this.
Art Gallery Handbook, 1999.
- Provenance (1)
-
David Mirvish (Canada), Toronto/Ontario/Canada, Purchased by the AGNSW from David Mirvish 1977
- Bibliography (3)
-
Bruce James (Australia) (Author), Edmund Capon (England; Australia, b.1940) (Director), Art Gallery of New South Wales handbook, Domain, 1999, 69 (colour illus.).
Susan Lee (Editor), Art Investigator, Port Melbourne, 1998, 217 (colour illus.).
Annabel Davie (Editor), Art Gallery of New South Wales Handbook, Domain, 1988, 95 (colour illus.), 96.
