UH remembers legendary artist Frank Stella

The legacy of artist Frank Stella lives on at the University of Houston, despite his passing. Stella died on Saturday.

The University of Houston System commissioned Stella to create a colorful collage of abstract images and patterns in 1997. For seven months, he worked with dozens of artists, including UH students, to create the most large work from the UH system public art collection.

Located within the UH Moores Opera Center, Euphonia spans more than five thousand square feet and is one of the largest works he has ever produced.

“It really makes space. Frank was absolutely right about that,” said Beth Robertson, a former UH system regent and philanthropist who was a friend of Stella’s.

This immersive work of art was months in the making. Robertson said the community’s involvement in “Euponia” gave Stella real satisfaction: It was created to be experienced and shared.

“It was the community involvement – ​​the PUBLIC part of public art – that really excited him. Because of its immense scale, he and colleague Earl Childress engaged many UH and Houston artists in its production, including two “public” days where the community could add a little painting here and there. And now it’s being seen and enjoyed by all these wonderful music students and patrons of Moores Opera,” added Robertson.

“The joy of sharing this work and the fact that the Houston art community has been so involved in it and taken part in it, I think, makes it even better.”

Stella’s career has spanned six decades. Before she was twenty-five, Stella’s work was recognized for its innovations. Beyond painting, he was prolific in the use of mixed media and unconventional geometric canvases. Throughout his career, he has exhibited in many prestigious galleries and museums, some of which even helped define the art world in the 1960s. Today, his work is held in a collection and exhibited in the whole world.

“Frank Stella truly left an extraordinary legacy at the University of Houston with his monumental work Euphonia,” said Rachel Mohl, executive director and chief curator of public art for the University of Houston System. “The mural is a testament to the artist’s pioneering innovations and collaborative spirit.”

Stella’s Euphonia is unlike any other project, not only in Houston but around the world, and is an important addition to public art on the university campus and in the city of Houston. It lives on through a citywide collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum, the Menil Collection, the Cultural Arts Council of Houston and Harris County, the Blaffer Gallery and the Moores School of Music Society.

Alison de Lima Greene, Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, commented: “Frank Stella is one of a handful of painters who can aptly be described as having changed the art courses in America. His dazzling Euphonia murals for Moore’s School of Music distill his brilliant mastery of color, light and space, as he engages in a complex architectural program to create an immersive artistic environment. You walk in and your morale soars.

Stella was honored at UH in 2018 during a celebration marking Euphonia’s 20th anniversary.

“That doesn’t seem 20 to me,” Stella joked at the time. “I look 20 years older.”

Frank Stella was 87 years old.