Shoubeegi

The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, the USA.

Enamel, sparkles, metal.

In the series “Indian Birds” to which this work belongs, the artist experimented with the picturesque space both inside the picture and with the visual view from the outside. To create the work, he applied metal curls-spirals that protrude far ahead from the surface of the canvas. This partly turns the picture, if not into a sculptural, then into a bas-relief composition. The plot of this work is dedicated to bright exotic birds, the life of which the artist observed during his trip to Ahmedabad in 1977. To give the abstract work the effect of an elegant bird’s plumage, Frank Stella used bright spangles covering some parts of the surface of the picture.