1982
39 78 x 45 1/2 inches
Mixed media over offset lithograph
Signed verso
Ex-collection
The Artist
Private collection until 2017

An electric and fiery palette sets the tone for Stella Shards IV, 1982, an exciting offering from the minimalist turned maximalist abstract artist, Frank Stella. To create this work, Frank Stella sought inspiration from his painting series of the same title, in which the artist collages and paints on discarded scrap metal in a monumental scale.  The fourth of five works from the series Shards.  This work was influenced by paper cutouts of shapes as well as grid systems that had appeared in Stella’s prior paintings.  Aptly titled Shards, this print depicts fragments of former objects. Richard H. Axsom points out the re-occurring images in this work that are among Stella’s favorite motifs:  French curves, “cookie cutouts,” the serpentine and heart shaped forms, as well as the pantograph, a draftman’s device for duplicating and enlarging forms. Axsom continues to state of this series, “In Shards, the staccato rhythms of floating eccentric shapes, reminiscent of Kandinsky’s biomorphic abstraction of the 1930s, create a series that is whimsical and jazzy” .