Launching alongside this year’s Frieze Masters, Shapero Modern will hold the first comprehensive UK exhibition of Frank Stella works since 2013. The exhibition covers the period 1967 – 2001, showing the progression of Stella’s prolific career. The Shapero Modern show is a survey of Frank Stella’s prints and works on paper bringing the experimentation in his printmaking, his love of colour and his enduring relationship with abstraction to a new audience.
Gallery Director Tabitha Philpott-Kent, comments, This exciting move for Shapero Modern solidifies the gallery as a distinct entity from our Rare Books counterpart. While we continue to work closely together, the Maddox Street space provides the opportunity to present a bold new exhibition programme. Our opening exhibition of works by Frank Stella offers the rare chance to explore this highly renowned artist.
Stella, whilst prominent as both an abstract painter and sculptor, also made major contributions to the history of modern print and no biography or survey of the artist would be complete without acknowledging this rich side of his artistic practice. Stella himself commented ‘the prints are in all of my work’.
It was, however, Stella’s collaboration with the master printer and publisher Kenneth Tyler that produced one of ‘the great partnerships in modern American Art’. Tyler and Stella first began to print together in 1967, at Gemini G.E.L in Los Angeles, and later at Tyler Graphics LTD in New York. Tyler became such an intrinsic part of Stella’s print work that when Tyler Graphics LTD shuttered its doors in 2001, Stella stopped making prints altogether.
Shapero Modern was founded in 2014 under the guidance of Gallery Director Tabitha Philpott-Kent, specialising in Post War and Contemporary, prints, multiples and works on paper with a particular focus on American 20th-century art. It has always been housed in the same building as Shapero Rare Books which also sees an exciting move to a new location.
The gallery can be seen in advance of the Stella show with an exhibition of Pop Art and Op Art, showcasing a collection of prints, paintings and sculptures that capture the Post-War moment. These works were born at a moment in art history that recast public conception of the entire art market through radical shifts in both subject matter and medium, and at the heart of the show are prints by Lichtenstein, Warhol and Frank Stella, as well as sculptures by Vasarely.
Under the curatorial eye of Philpott-Kent, Shapero Modern will run a programme of six exhibitions per year, from both primary and secondary market artists, including collaborations with contemporary living artists as well as masters of 20th-century Post War prints and works on paper.
Shapero Modern exhibits at major art fairs worldwide including Art Miami, TEFAF Maastricht, TEFAF New York, Masterpiece London and Frieze Masters, while Tabitha and her team are on hand to advise on all aspects of the art market and collecting.
