American artist Frank Stella first gained recognition for a series of symmetrical, monochromatic canvases he made between 1959 and 1960, now collectively known as the Black Paintings. These paintings were executed in regular two-and-a-half-inch strokes of black enamel paint, with a thin line of canvas left bare between each strip. Stella’s innovation with this approach was in creating a “non-relational” painting—a painting in which no one section commanded more attention than any other. The Black Paintings are now seen by many as the decisive hinge between Modernism and the Minimalist movement that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century. In Glenstone’s collection is one of these early paintings, Bethlehem’s Hospital, 1959.

–Jamiee Shim, from the Glenstone Field Guide