Curated: Frank Stella’s Prints

At the de Young, Anderson Gallery 17, through June 25, 2017

Frank Stella’s Prints highlights the American artist’s experimental printmaking over a twenty-five-year period starting in 1967, the year he began working in the medium. Examples are drawn from the Anderson Collection of Graphic Arts held in the Fine Arts Museums’ Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts and loans from Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson. Though he came to printmaking somewhat reluctantly, Frank Stella (b. 1936) eventually discovered its potential and has continued with the form. He began with lithography, making prints that expand upon formal concerns he explored in his painting practice such as scale, surface, and texture. The artist later incorporated additional print processes into his practice.

The exhibition provides an opportunity to consider the artist’s prints in the context of the major exhibition Frank Stella: A Retrospective (http://deyoung.famsf.org/exhibitions/stella). Some of the pieces in Frank Stella’s Prints reprise the paintings in the retrospective, including Jill (1967), from the Black Series II, based on his 1959 painting of the same title. Other prints, such as Squid (1989) and The Cabin. Ahab and Starbuck (Dome) (1992) are part of larger projects—in this case Moby Dick (1985–1997)—that the artist fashioned from paintings, relief-sculptures, collages, and prints.