Frank Stella (1936-2024) was a pivotal figure in post-war abstract art, whose body of work delved into the interplay of geometry, color, and the intersection of painting and sculpture. Stella believed that abstraction is not confined to simple geometric forms but could convey a narrative through the interaction of shapes and colors. Throughout his career, Stella continuously explored form, geometry, and abstraction across various mediums. He expanded beyond two-dimensional canvases into three-dimensional sculpture and architecture, experimenting with materials and surfaces, and engaging with cultural histories and literary traditions. Born in Malden, MA, Stella studied painting at Phillips Academy Andover under Patrick Morgan and history and painting at Princeton University under Stephen Greene and William Seitz. Moving to New York in 1958, he gained prominence in the early 1960s with his stark Black Paintings and innovative shaped canvases. His early works were featured in landmark exhibitions that defined postwar art, such as Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959, Geometric Abstraction at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1962, The Shaped Canvas and Systemic Painting at the Guggenheim in 1964 and 1966, and Structure of Color at the Whitney in 1971.

Stella's prolific output was showcased in numerous museum and gallery exhibitions. A significant retrospective by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2015 traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX, and the de Young Museum in San Francisco, CA. Stella also had two retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, one in 1987 and another in 1970, when he was only 34. His works are housed in prestigious public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Denver Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, among many others.