Chyrow II 1972

Frank Stella made this shaped canvas piece, Chyrow II, and like a lot of his work, it’s about colour and form doing a little dance together. The flat, bold colours are the first thing you notice. They're applied so smoothly, almost mechanically, yet they create this energetic visual rhythm. Look at how the orange stripe shoots across the lower right. It’s like a little jolt that sets off the cooler blues and greens. The surfaces are pristine, but the way the shapes intersect and overlap gives the piece depth and dimension, a literal third dimension, in fact! It reminds me of some of Ellsworth Kelly's shaped paintings, but Stella’s got this wild energy that’s all his own. The way he plays with geometry and colour, it’s like he's asking: can painting be a thing in the world, rather than just a window onto it?