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For Frank Stella, 1958 was a crucial year. After graduating from Princeton University, he moved to Manhattan and painted a series of monumental, colorful canvases that culminated in the first of his famous “black paintings.” This fascinating book focuses on the thirty works he painted that year. The paintings reflect his transformation from a student experimenting with abstract expressionism to a highly original artist whose works changed the course of postwar art.

Presenting the entire series of paintings in color for the first time (except lost works known only through black-and-white photographs), this handsome book details the course of Stella’s career in 1958. The authors situate his work in relation to that of Carl Andre, with whom Stella shared studio space that year, and Jasper Johns. Their analysis draws on concepts of originality, repetition, assemblage, and opticality.

Drawing on new archival findings, firsthand observations of the paintings, and interviews with Stella and members of his circle, this volume enriches our understanding of a fascinating and critical stage in the artist’s development.

Harry Cooper is curator of modern art at the Fogg Art Museum of the Harvard University Art Museums and coauthor of Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions and Mondrian: The Transatlantic Paintings, both published by Yale University Press. Megan Luke is in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.