This is fresh air.
I'm Terry Gross.
Today we remember the artist Frank Stella, whose work was regarded as revolutionary.
He died of lymphoma Saturday.
He was 87.
His New York Times obituary describes him as, quote, a dominant figure in post war american art, a restless, relentless innovator whose explorations of color and form made him an outsized presence, endlessly discussed and constantly on exhibit.
Unquote.
Stella is considered one of the fathers of the minimalist art of the 1960s.
His early revolutionary work in the late fifties was a series of black paintings, black stripes separated with thin stripes of blank white canvas.
The austerity of those paintings contrasted with the bold brushstrokes and drips of abstract expressionism.
Art critic Peter Sheldahl described Stella's impact on abstract expressionism as, quote, something like Dylan's on music and Warhol's on more or less everything, unquote.
In the sixties, Stella moved on to geometrical paintings in vivid, contrasting colors.
His work continued to evolve with paintings and abstract sculptures on a large scale.
He sometimes used computer technology to generate images that he incorporated into his work.
Stella was also admired for his ideas about art.
In the mid eighties, he gave the prestigious Norton lectures at Harvard University.
Later we'll hear an interview I recorded with Frank Stella in 2000.
Let's start with our first interview from 1985.
In the first answer, he refers to Emile D'Antonio, who made the 1972 documentary painter's painting.
The black paintings were very controversial.