Loomings

Loomings S-7 is from a series of eponymously titled breakthrough sculptures that Frank Stella began in the mid-1980's. Lawrence Weschler described their importance in 1987: "In this case an extraordinary wave like shape breaks over the top of the painting and comes cascading down towards its center, suggesting, for one of the first times in Stella's career, neither abstract geomateric shape nor anonymous draftsman's tool but rather wave, hair, brushstroke...it seems to summon forth such associations but then modulate back to pure abstraction, hovering in and out of the world." (L. Weschler, Frank Stella: An Illustrated Biography, New York, 1995, p. 209). Stella himself referred to these works as "the biggest breakthrough for me" and Robert Hughes, writing about the large-scale work from the series Loomings (3X) (Collection: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis) described it as a "wave of polished aluminum, gray as sea fog, that swells across the wall...a magnificent piece with the Melvillean title of Loomings, Stella wrings more pictorial feeling from abstract art than anyone else alive" (Frank Stella: An Illustrated Biography, p. 208).