寿贝吉

The present piece is part of Stella's Indian Bird series, in which the artist further expanded the category of "painting." Stella deployed painted curlicue aluminum forms that jut out into the viewer's space - increasing the works' object-like nature and diminishing their appearance as paintings hanging on a wall. Stella's use of assembled parts and three-dimensional elements notwithstanding, he still regarded the Indian Bird series - at the time his most sculptural work - as consisting of paintings or painted reliefs. Seen by some at the time as "disco-like," the series' garishly colorful palette - produced by adhering particles of metal shaving or ground glass to a first layer of color, which were then painted or stained over - was also new to his oeuvre. Stella began the series during his 1977 stay in Ahmedabad, naming the individual works after birds found on the Indian subcontinent.