The first painting by Frank Stella that I saw (in reproduction) was Tomlinson Court Park I from 1959. This painting was done with black enamel house paint and consists of concentric rectangles separated by thin lines of unpainted canvas. My first thought was: “So what? How boring.” But Stella has a way of sticking with you and challenging your assumptions. He was one of the early artists to embrace what became known as minimalism and became famous for the comment: “What you see is what you see.” He turned out to have a dramatic, if indirect, influence on Chicago abstractionists in the 1970s who were committed to the ‘truth to materials” approach to painting. This approach acknowledged paint on canvas as paint, not necessarily an image. Frank Pannier—a member of Artists Anonymous, a group of five Chicago abstract artists from the late 1970s—was especially committed to this philosophy.

        But times changed, and Stella began to experiment with content through shaped canvases and color as early as the mid-1960s. First, in 1965, came a series of “chevron” paintings—one, De la nada vida a la nada Muerte, is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The “chevrons” were closely followed by the now famous “Protractor” series. These large paintings, like harran-ii from 1967, with their precise geometry and striking color are what won me over. They were simultaneously accompanied by irregular geometric-shaped canvas pieces like Chocorua IV. In these paintings, non-material content began to creep into Stella’s work—whether he liked it or not. It was his mastery of color that evoked particular emotional states, much like the work of Wayne Thiebaud. His titles also hinted at hidden content; the title of his work at the Art Institute of Chicago translates to “From life nothing to death nothing.” Earlier pieces had titles that alluded to the Holocaust such as “Arbeit Macht Frei,” a black and white stripe print series from 1967.

        Then, the 1980s and post-expressionism came along, and Stella could be said to have helped lead the way with this movement. His paintings became populated with highly organic shapes and evolved into reliefs with projecting segments. They have been described as “baroque minimalism,” but there is nothing minimal about them. These collaged pieces with protruding sculptural elements even have a sense of androgyny through their flamboyance. When I first saw one of them at the Whitney Museum of American Art, I was shocked at the camp vibes it gave off. They contain exuberant splashes of line, form, and color (sometimes beginning to evoke John Chamberlain’s car part sculptures in their color and irregular forms). From there, Stella gravitated to free-standing sculpture. But during this time, there were a series of black and white prints that looked backward. Talladega Three I, from 1982, is a large etching and aquatint that subtly suggests the texture of Pollock’s splash paintings. In this work, the past creeps in, disguised as a meandering line overlaid on a field of gestural strokes.

        The 1990s saw Stella concentrating on three-dimensional works, be they high reliefs or free-standing sculptures. They began to “calm down” and not be so exuberant. Into that decade, some of the sculptures took on a darker tone. For example, in Fishkill from 1995, the color disappeared, the raw metal was allowed to dominate, and at one angle, the sculpture has the outline of a fish. But as if to pull out of a slump, these works were followed by sculptures in the 2000s that were inspired by the music of Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti. At once more colorful and joyous than the 1990s work, K.81 Combo (K.37 and K.43) from 2009 is a large, exuberant piece from this series, and there were smaller, more intimate works like k.507 and k.509 that could fit into a home.

        Stella ended his career fully embracing twenty-first century technology by using 3D printing and digital 3D modeling. He was certainly an artist that kept up with the times and was a leader who was always innovating. In his 2015 interview with Stella from Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA), Michael Auping noted that “a young artist not yet convinced, admitted, ‘I hope I can still piss people off when I’m 80.’”

Michel Ségard is the Editor in Chief of the New Art Examiner and a former adjunct assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also the author of numerous exhibition catalog essays.