Lot 125
  • 125

Frank Stella

Estimate
600,000 - 800,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Frank Stella
  • Tetuan I (Small Version)
  • signed, titled and dated 1965 on the stretcher
  • fluorescent alkyd on canvas
  • 21 by 21 in. 53.3 by 53.3 cm.

Provenance

Lawrence Rubin, New York
Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Galeria Toselli, Milan
Agenzia d'Arte Moderna Sprovieri, Rome
Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne
Acquired by the present owner from the above in October 1985

Literature

Lawrence Rubin, Frank Stella, Paintings 1958 to 1965: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1986, p. 245, illustrated

Condition

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of light wear and handling along the edges. There are light, scattered and unobtrusive abrasions. There are scattered pinpoint media accretions in the lower right quadrant, presumably from the time of execution, including a white media accretion along the right edge. Upon close inspection, there are some scattered and unobtrusive abrasions. Under Ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. Framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

“Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary. Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint stripes. There is nothing else in his paintings. He is not interested in sensitivity or personality, either his own or those of his audience. He is interested in the necessities of painting. Symbols are counters passed among people. Frank Stella’s painting is not symbolic. His stripes are the paths of brush on canvas. These paths lead only into painting.” Carl Andre

Tetuan I (Small Version) is a paradigm of the development of minimal trends of modern painting. Frank Stella’s sensible diagonal brushstrokes belie the rigid sensibility of the artist’s aesthetic tenets. The thinly defined, yellow and burgundy stripes of fluorescent alkyd pigment reveal a marvelous understanding of the tactility of paint. As the eye moves closer into the center of the canvas, the appearance of banal and linear exactitude give way to the viewer’s understanding of the artist’s brilliant technique. Separating each alternating stripe are pauses, where the intensity of Stella’s handling descends into spaces of nothingness. It is here where the flat reality of the picture plane is challenged and beautifully disintegrated into the absence of form.

Tetuan I (Small Version) belongs to a series of square, brightly colored Moroccan Paintings, all executed in 1964 and 1965. The matter-of-fact formality of each one of the twelve works in this series is further emphasized by their geographical titles, which all reference cities in Morocco. Similar to five other titles in the series, Tetuan I exists in a large format in addition to the present intimate composition. This work is exemplary of Stella’s mature style, defined overall by a pervasive spatial flatness of the canvas, and emphasized by a reductive vocabulary of form. Counter to the unpredictable and unbounded gestural freedom which characterized the work of many of the artist’s Abstract Expressionist predecessors, Stella’s commitment and esteem for utter flatness is unbounded. The artist engaged wholeheartedly with the project of probing the opportunistic depths of the two-dimensional picture plane.

A visual dialogue with other contemporaries of Stella’s also exists. Stella's formal correspondence and friendship with the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre is particularly relevant in their aesthetic concerns and common regard for the use of repeated units as formal devices in their respective oeuvres. Certainly, Andre's patterns of interlocking wooden blocks and metal squares offer a close parallel to Stella's striped paintings; like Stella's ground-breaking Black Paintings of 1958 and 1959, the ostensible simplicity of Tetuan I (Small Version) maintains the purest essence of the modernism of the age. Flatness, according to Stella's lectures at the Pratt Institute in January 1960, is achieved through symmetry and the use of the monochrome. This solution forces illusionistic space out of a canvas at constant intervals through the rigidity of a regulated pattern. Stella would later contend otherwise; years later campaigning for the reintroduction of illusionistic volume into the spatial language of non-objective painting.

The evolution of Stella’s theory of the essential qualities of the picture plane is already visible in two earlier series: the multi-color Concentric Square and Mitered Maze paintings from 1962 and 1963. Unlike his earlier shaped canvases, the stripes in the present work no longer run parallel to their enclosing boundaries. The entire surface appears to be in motion, with each diagonal existing not simply as a plane in a tectonic field but comprising a field itself. Equilibrium is achieved by Stella’s precise counterbalancing of these dynamic and forceful areas across the delicate central void.