Shards Variant 1a
Frank Stella
Shards Variant 1a
lithograph & screenprint
1982
An original hand-signed Frank Stella lithograph & screenprint print.
1982
Original lithograph and screenprint in colors from 43 runs from 33 aluminum plates and 2 screens on 320 gram Arches Cover wove paper.
Hand-signed and dated in pencil lower right F. Stella ’82.
A superb printer’s proof impression, one of only 4 such printer’s proofs, apart from the numbered edition of 38, annotated in pencil also lower right (there were 20 proofs of various types, for an overall edition of 58). One of nine plates from the series Shards. Published by Petersburg Press, New York; printed by John Hutcheson, James Welty, Spencer Tomkins and Norman Lassiter.
Catalog: Axsom 149
Size Image: 45 ½ x 39 ¾ inches
Sheet Size: 45 ½ x 39 ¾ inches
Framed Size: 53 x 47 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches
Shards, comprising five lithographs on screenprinted paper and four variants, is the second series related to the Circuitspaintings of 1981. It was the last project Stella undertook with Petersburg Press. The Shards Series of paintings (1982-83) was fashioned, in large part, from leftover elements from the Circuits paintings and prints. The word “shards” usually associated with fragments of broken earthenware, here suggests Stella’s use of discarded scrap material, a method of working that would become increasingly to define his practice as an artist.
Although the Shards and Circuits prints relate to the same painting series, the effects they achieve could hardly be more different. In Shards, the staccato rhythms of floating abstract shapes recall Wassily Kandinsky’s and Joan Miró’s biomorphic surrealism of the 1930’s. With a similar expressiveness, Stella’s series is both jazzy and whimsical.
