Frank Stella - New Now New York Tuesday, September 24, 2019 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Irving Blum, New York
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    The Fort Worth Art Museum; Newport Harbor Art Museum; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; The Vancouver Art Gallery; Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art; Jackson, Mississippi Museum of Art; The Denver Art Museum; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Des Moines Art Center, Stella Since 1970, March 19, 1978 - April 27, 1980, no. 2, p. 105 (illustrated, p. 107)

  • Catalogue Essay

    The Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection reads like a cross-continental survey of the 20th century’s most influential artists. Born out of the seminal decade of the 1960s, the collection is not only a tribute to the dawning of a revolutionary cultural era but a witness to its making. To look at how Miles and Shirley Fiterman collected is to understand the importance of the collector at this crucial point in post-war history; when contemporary art solidified its institutional recognition and found relevance with a wider public. The selection of artworks they assembled dance between abstraction and figuration and feature some of the most esteemed all-American artists, including Sam Francis, Frank Stella, Alexander Calder and John Chamberlain.

    Sam Francis’s EVIII, 1971, represents the artist’s love of color, light and travel. Francis renders spontaneous clouds of exquisite color to the corners of the work, reminiscent of a gentle Parisian atmosphere. In contrast, the vast negative space that spans across the large-scale canvas, central to Francis’ style after the mid-1960s, embraces the sharp energy of New York Minimalism. The bursts of pigment that frame the work evokes an edgeless nature that pulls the dynamic abstraction off the canvas.

    Drawing from the history of the Nazi takeover during World War II, Frank Stella’s Narwola II, 1971 is a geometric interpretation of Polish synagogues and their distinct architecture. Created with wood, brightly colored felt and canvas, this work is part of the Polish Village series prominent to Stella’s practice from 1971-1973. In this series, he appropriated graphic elements such as diagonally slanted roofs and wooden beams typical of Polish villages. Coupling these dynamic designs with Stella’s flattened perspective, this work speaks to the resulting demolition in post-war Poland.

    This selection from the Fiterman Collection is a wonderful window into what made their collecting so seminal even in its own time – a great blend of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture of the two predominant movements from mid-century America, Pop and Abstract Expressionism.

  • Artist Biography

    Frank Stella

    American • 1936 - N/A

    One of the most important living artists, Frank Stella is recognized as the most significant painter that transitioned from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism. He believes that the painting should be the central object of interest rather than represenative of some subject outside of the work. Stella experimented with relief and created sculptural pieces with prominent properties of collage included. Rejecting the normalities of Minimalism, the artist transformed his style in a way that inspired those who had lost hope for the practice. Stella lives in Malden, Massachusetts and is based in New York and Rock Tavern, New York.

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Property From The Miles And Shirley Fiterman Collection

Ο54

Narowla II

signed, titled and dated "#NAROWLA II #10 NAROWLA II F. Stella 71" on the reverse; further dedicated "TO I. BLUM" on the stretcher
acrylic, felt, canvas and paper collage on panel
108 x 104 x 8 in. (274.3 x 264.2 x 20.3 cm.)
Executed in 1971.

Estimate
$250,000 - 350,000 

Sold for $680,000

Contact Specialist
Sam Mansour
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1219

New Now

New York Auction 24 September 2019