Frank Stella, artist hailed as the ‘father of minimalism’ whose later work burst into audacious forms – obituary

In his lectures he offered a broad critique of the minimalist style which he had done so much to promote. “Most close-valued, shallow-surfaced painting of the last 15 years,” he declared, had been “excruciatingly dull and unpromising”. By contrast, the dramatic foreshortenings and crowded foregrounds of Caravaggio suggested both perspective and the extension of the action beyond the picture into the space of the viewer. This was just what modern painting needed, he said.

His earlier work, he suggested later – “all of that cleverness and yacking about it” – was “a kind of hiding from the fact that in some way I wasn’t acceptable and my feelings weren’t that acceptable”. But his volte face never seemed to bother him: “There’s a power in the stripe paintings that the newer ones will never have. On the other hand, there is an energy – a kind of florid excitement – in the newer works that the stripe paintings didn’t have. I don’t think you can do it all at once. That’s why you’re lucky to have a lifetime.”

Frank Philip Stella was born on May 12 1936 to first-generation immigrant Sicilians, and grew up in Malden, a blue-collar suburb of Boston. His father, a gynaecologist, sent him to Phillips Academy, Andover, where he earned a reputation for fearlessness (he once lost three front teeth in a dormitory scrap). As a child he never dreamed of becoming an artist: “My parents’ view was that artists were possibly a little better than pimps.” But at Princeton University, where he studied history, he joined a night class in painting and drawing and discovered his vocation.

After graduating in 1958 he moved to New York, where, before long, he was sharing a loft studio on West Broadway with Carl Andre and the photographer Hollis Frampton.