Frank Stella "Concentric Square," 1961. © 2014 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Works by American artist Frank Stella are currently being featured in three exhibitions organized by leading galleries. Dominique Lévy is inaugurating her London outpost with the show “Local History: Castellani, Judd, Stella,” which is complemented by a partner exhibition of the same title at her Manhattan gallery. Meanwhile, Marianne Boesky Gallery is hosting a show of Stella’s sculptures in New York. Stella is co-represented by Lévy and Boesky.

Stella, who has been a dominant figure in abstract painting since the early 1960s, is best known for his Minimalist works and post-painterly abstractions. He gained immediate recognition in 1959, thanks to his “Black Paintings” -- a series of precisely-striped canvases that were created according to a predetermined, circumscribed system conceived by the artist. This series, which stood in stark contrast to the gestural paintings of the Abstract Expressionists, served as an important catalyst for Minimalism. As Stella’s career progressed, he continued to focus on the basic, formal elements of art, including color, shape, and composition. From three-dimensional paintings on shaped canvases to large-scale freestanding sculptures, architectural structures, and pioneering prints, Stella’s relentless experimentation has made him a key figure in American modernism.  

“Local History,” the transatlantic exhibition at Dominique Lévy, captures a brief yet profound moment of creative intersection in the careers of three celebrated Postwar artists -- Frank Stella, Enrico Castellani, and Donald Judd. The show presents rarely seen early works of the 1950s through the early 1970s by each artist alongside later works, illustrating how their styles and aesthetics evolved and occasionally crossed paths.

“Frank Stella Sculpture” at Marianne Boesky Gallery offers a glimpse into Stella’s dynamic output since the 1990s. In true Stella fashion, his sculptures are created using a unique technique called rapid prototyping. Stella creates a digital rendering of a piece, which is read by computer-guided machines that build forms out of layers of materials such as aluminum and titanium. The works showcase Stella’s ongoing fascination and experimentation with scale, composition, form, and color.

Frank Stella "The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II," 1959.

The exhibitions at Dominique Levy and Marianne Boesky Gallery are precursors to the most comprehensive presentation of Stella’s career to date. Opening fall 2015 at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new building in downtown Manhattan, the retrospective, which is co-organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, will showcase Stella’s prolific output from the mid-1950s to the present. The monumental exhibition will remain on view through Winter 2016.

“Frank Stella Sculptures” will remain on view at Marianne Boesky Gallery through December 20, 2014. “Local History” is on view at Dominique Levy in New York through January 3, 2015, and Dominique Levy in London through January 24, 2015.