La penna di hu
Artist: Frank Stella (American, 1936 - 2024)
Date: 1987;2009
Dimensions:
H: 104 in. (264.2 mm); W: 130 in. (330.2 mm); Depth: 65 1/2 in. (166.4 mm)
Medium: Mixed media on etched magnesium, aluminum, and fiberglass
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey and Museum Purchase, by exchange
Object number: 2012.104
Label Text:La Penna di hu (“the peacock feather,” the title of an Italian folktale) explores the relationship between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. Hung on the wall, it is almost as if a painting has suddenly exploded out into three dimensions, with its forms springing free from the frame. “They’re paintings,” Stella insisted of his three-dimensional works, “because they function in a pictorial way. They float. Sculpture never floats. You look at them in the same way you look at paintings.”
With its Dayglo colors La Penna di hu looks like a layering of machine parts and three-dimensional engineering diagrams. Stella used what at the time was state-of-the-art computer drawing to design the sculpture (the design was also translated into a series of works in various media). The piece has no enclosed volumes, as we might expect from more traditional sculpture. Instead, the structure is open, with “cages” and “frames” that allow the viewer to see all the way through the work and to examine the way the forms intersect, overlap, or otherwise interact with each other and the space around them.
With its Dayglo colors La Penna di hu looks like a layering of machine parts and three-dimensional engineering diagrams. Stella used what at the time was state-of-the-art computer drawing to design the sculpture (the design was also translated into a series of works in various media). The piece has no enclosed volumes, as we might expect from more traditional sculpture. Instead, the structure is open, with “cages” and “frames” that allow the viewer to see all the way through the work and to examine the way the forms intersect, overlap, or otherwise interact with each other and the space around them.
DescriptionA large-scale assemblage of open-work shapes in red, yellow, blue, hot pink, gray, and black. Shapes are primarily cylinders and cones, as well as flat cut-outs that seem like partial diagrams (one such cut-out, the largest and most frontal element of the entire relief sculpture, is bright red and sickle-shaped). These elements hover in front of and behind, in some cases seeming to penetrate, a sea-green rectangular screen.
This is a large-scale assemblage of open-work shapes in red, yellow, blue, hot pink, gray, and black—primarily cylinders and cones, as well as flat cut-outs that seem like partial diagrams (one such cut-out, the largest and most frontal element of the entire relief sculpture, is bright red and sickle-shaped). These elements hover in front of and behind, in some cases seeming to penetrate, a sea-green rectangular screen, and the whole relief pushes out from the wall far enough so that a viewer could step behind it, though not all the way around it. It is therefore wall-bound but can appear instead to float just above the floor and just out from the wall, an effect enhanced by the relative transparency of each of its elements.
This is a large-scale assemblage of open-work shapes in red, yellow, blue, hot pink, gray, and black—primarily cylinders and cones, as well as flat cut-outs that seem like partial diagrams (one such cut-out, the largest and most frontal element of the entire relief sculpture, is bright red and sickle-shaped). These elements hover in front of and behind, in some cases seeming to penetrate, a sea-green rectangular screen, and the whole relief pushes out from the wall far enough so that a viewer could step behind it, though not all the way around it. It is therefore wall-bound but can appear instead to float just above the floor and just out from the wall, an effect enhanced by the relative transparency of each of its elements.
Not on view
In Collection(s)