Kozangrodek III

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Kozangrodek III by Frank Stella is a large relief collage that is taller than an average man and about as wide. It contains panels of vibrantly colored, smooth material that stand out at angles from each other, forming an abstract citiscape.
Frank Stella, Kozangrodek III, 1973. Relief collage with mixed media (canvas, corrugated cardboard, felt, plywood, masonite, paint). Museum Purchase through a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and the Art Acquisition Fund. 1976-18-1
Frank Stella
1973

Frank Stella produced his Polish Village Series of collages between 1970 and 1974. The extensive cycle entailed forty works, each with three separate iterations.

First, Stella made a collage of flat materials on canvas.

Second, he mounted the same materials onto a wooden support to lend further dimension.

Finally, as in this work, a cardboard structure supports tilted planes of acrylic, felt, and canvas.

Each work in the series is titled after a village in Poland and refers specifically to their synagogues, which were constructed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and destroyed under Nazi occupation between 1939 and 1945.

Post-Holocaust memory and measured abstraction have been frequent concerns for Stella since his early reactions, in the late 1950s, against Abstract Expressionist painting.

 

Author: Amy L. Powell, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, 2019