Under their tutelage, Stella was introduced to the inner circle of Abstract Expressionism and quickly became a convert. (3) He painted under the influence of artists such as Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and Franz Kline while at Princeton. In January 1958, Stella saw an exhibition of Jasper Johns “target” and “flag” paintings at Leo Castelli’s Gallery New York and was powerfully impressed by them. (4) In response to them, Stella embarked upon a language of his own, making paintings with “single or multiple box forms placed in varying contexts of bands or stripes. These pictures constitute the bridge, or transition, to the Black series” a series of paintings begun in 1958 that firmly established Stella’s reputation and his individual voice as an artist. (5)

Shortly after Stella graduated from Princeton he moved to Manhattan and quickly gained recognition in the New York art world. Moving further away from the paint-laden, gestural surfaces of abstract expressionist works and towards flatter surfaces and a more minimal color palette, Stella’s paintings reflected his statement of the time that a picture was “a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more.” Stella’s “Black Paintings,” made from 1958-1960, were early manifestations of this credo, in which he made austere paintings with bands of black paint separated by regular intervals of unpainted canvas. Several of these paintings were included in two groundbreaking exhibitions: “Three Young Americans” at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in 1959 and “Sixteen Americans” at MoMA in 1959-1960. One of these paintings, “The Marriage of Reason and Squalor,” was purchased by Alfred Barr for the permanent collection of MoMA. In August of 1959, Stella became part of the stable of artists represented by the renowned gallerist Leo Castelli.

Not resting on his laurels, nor content to repeat himself, Stella soon experimented with new materials, techniques, and styles. In the 1960s, he used aluminum and copper paint and began making differently shaped canvases; not using the typical, and readily available, rectangular or square shapes. He also expanded his color palette and, in some works, arranged these colors in arcs and concentric circles. In the mid-1960s, Stella began using a new medium—prints—and worked with Kenneth Tyler at Gemini G.E.L. He designed the set and costumes for Merce Cunningham’s “Scramble” in 1967 and, in the 1970s, turned his hand to three-dimensional, collaged, relief art.