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Friday, 08 April 2011 03:06

Irregular Polygons by American Master Frank Stella

Frank Stella, Chocorua IV, 1966, fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paints on canvas, 120 x 128 x 4 in. (304.8 x 325.12 x 10.16 cm). Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Purchased through the Miriam and Sidney Stoneman Acquisitions Fund, a gift from Judson and Carol Bemis ’76, and gifts from the Lathrop Fellows in honor of Brian P. Kennedy, director of the Hood Museum of Art, 2005–2010; 2010.50. © 2010 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Frank Stella, Chocorua IV, 1966, fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paints on canvas, 120 x 128 x 4 in. (304.8 x 325.12 x 10.16 cm). Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Purchased through the Miriam and Sidney Stoneman Acquisitions Fund, a gift from Judson and Carol Bemis ’76, and gifts from the Lathrop Fellows in honor of Brian P. Kennedy, director of the Hood Museum of Art, 2005–2010; 2010.50. © 2010 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Steven Sloman.

Through July 24, 2011
Toledo Museum of Art, 2445 Monroe Street, Toledo, Ohio
For information call 419.255.8000 or visit www.toledomuseum.org

A consistent innovator at the forefront of abstract art, Stella produces his works in series, immersing himself in visual thinking and creating according to the principle of, in his words, “line, plane, volume, and point, within space.”

This exhibition presents one of each of the artist’s eleven monumental compositions for the Irregular Polygons series (1965–66), along with preparatory drawings and the 1974 print series Eccentric Polygons based on the Irregular Polygons. Stella uses the same shapes but varies colors in the lithograph series. “Together the objects provide visitors a chance to engage with the ‘complex simplicity’ that is the paradox of Stella’s work,” says Toledo Art Museum Director Brian Kennedy. “It’s the first time all of these monumental works will have been displayed in one room. In fact, until this exhibition was organized, all of them had never had been shown together,” he notes.

What’s perhaps even more startling is that Frank Stella is the first artist in history to create a deliberate set of paintings shaped as irregular polygons. Before Stella, most often paintings were rectangular or more rarely, oval, circular or square, as Kennedy points out in the 134-page scholarly catalog he wrote to accompany the exhibition.

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