Frank Stella Quotes about Art

Frank Stella is a famous American abstract painter, printmaker and sculptor associated with the Minimalism and Geometric Abstraction art movements. He is best known for his brightly colored abstract paintings and his large outdoor sculptures. Famous Frank Stella artworks include “Cones and Pillars”, “Shoubeegi”, “The Marriage of Reason and Squalor”, “Riallaro”, “Six Mile Bottom”, “Tomlinson Court Park”, “Jasper’s Dilemma” and “Hudson River Valley”.

Mini biography: Born Frank Philip Stella on the 12th of May, 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, United States of America. His mother was Constance Aida Santonelli and his father Frank Stella was a gynecologist. Stella married the art historian Barbara Rose in 1961 and they had two children together: Michael and Rachael. They divorced in 1969. He married his second wife Harriet McGurk in 1978. He also has two sons: Patrick Stella and and Peter Stella.

List of Famous Frank Stella Art Quotes

People say that the paintings are always big because they’re striving for effect, but they’re also big so that I don’t trip over myself, so that I have room to work, and people can come in and be comfortable. Frank Stella

I got tired of other’s people painting and began to make my own paintings. I found, however, that I not only got tired of looking at my own paintings but that I also didn’t like painting them at all. The painterly problems of what to put here and there and how to do it to make it go with what was already there, became more and more difficult and the solutions more and more unsatisfactory. Frank Stella

The painting never changes once I’ve started to paint it. I work things out before-hand in the sketches. Frank Stella

I know what I want, but it’s physically beyond me now. I can work on what I can handle. It’s a playoff between the object and my physical limits. Frank Stella

My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object and anyone who gets involved enough in this finally has to face up to the objectness of whatever it is that he’s doing. He is making a thing. Frank Stella

I hate to say this.. it’s made to order. Then, I disorder it a little bit or, I should say, I reorder it. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous to claim that I had the ability to disorder it. I wish I did. Frank Stella

I don’t like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it’s hard to be old and like what goes on around you. Frank Stella

The idea that they know what minimalism is is absurd. I don’t know what minimalism is! Frank Stella

You can’t shake your own sensibility. No matter what the concept is, the artist’s eye decides when it’s right.. which is a notion of sensibility. Frank Stella

I always get into arguments, with people who want to retain the old values in painting — the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object. Frank Stella

I don’t know how I got into sculpture. I liked its physicality, that’s the only reason. Frank Stella

I don’t like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life. Frank Stella

The paintings got sculptural because the forms got more complicated. I’ve learned to weave in and out. Frank Stella

The idea in being a painter is to declare an identity. Not just my identity, an identity for me, but an identity big enough for everyone to share in. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Frank Stella

The whole idea of making art is to be open, to be generous, and absorb the viewer and absorb yourself, to let them go into it. I have to go into all those places in order to make it work. Frank Stella

I can’t stress enough how important it is, if you are interested at all in painting, to look and to look a great deal at painting. There is no other way to find out about painting. After looking comes imitating. In my own case it was at first largely a technical immersion. How did Kline put down that color? Why did Guston leave the canvas bare at the edges? Why did H. Frankenthaler used unsized canvas. And so on. Frank Stella

Abstract paintings must be as real as those created by the sixteenth century Italians. Frank Stella

Frank Stella Abstract Painting

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Related or similar popular artists and celebrities include: Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, and other Famous American Artists.