STELLA, Frank

Hailed before he turned twenty-five, Stella's early canvases consist of regularly patterned geometric shapes painted with evenly applied strokes out to the canvas's edge, so that the viewer cannot distinguish any one figure from the background, or form from content, or one image from any larger shape. These faintly mechanical paintings depend upon the appreciation of such strictly visual virtues as the relation of one color to another, the solidity of the geometric shapes, and the potential complexity...