The Gallery of Art has received a major gift from New York art collectors and patrons Ann Fertig Freedman and Robert L. Freedman.
Lo Sciocco Senza Paura (The Fearless Fool) (1984), by American artist Frank Stella, is a large-scale mixed-media relief painting measuring more than 10 feet by 10 feet by 2 feet. From Stella’s landmark Cones and Pillars series, the gallery’s new acquisition is constructed of etched magnesium, aluminum, Fiberglas and canvas.
“We are deeply moved by Ann and Robert’s generosity,” said Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts and director of the Gallery of Art. “This is an outstanding addition to our contemporary collection. At the same time, it will allow students and faculty from across the University to study, on a daily basis, a key work by the pre-eminent abstractionist of our time.”
Lo Sciocco Senza Paura will be installed in the main foyer of Steinberg Hall by April 14, when Stella will visit the Hilltop Campus as a keynote speaker for the groundbreaking of the $56.8 million Sam Fox Arts Center.
Ann Fertig Freedman is president of Knoedler & Co., which was established in 1846 and is New York’s oldest and one of the country’s most prestigious art galleries. A 1971 graduate of the School of Art, she began her career at the Andre Emmerich Gallery in New York before joining Knoedler in 1978 as director of the contemporary art department.
Robert L. Freedman is vice chairman of GVA Worldwide, a New York-based global real estate company. He is a featured speaker in the real estate industry, appearing regularly on networks such as MSNBC, CNBC and FOX as well as in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Born in 1936, Stella is one of the world’s most prominent contemporary artists and was first recognized in the late 1950s, when his rigorously geometric Black paintings established the basis for Minimalism. In the 1960s, he began incorporating shaped canvases into the similarly monochromatic Aluminum and Copper series and, in the 1970s and ’80s, moved from low-relief collage to increasingly colorful high-relief constructions.
The freely painted Cones and Pillars series was inspired by Italo Calvino’s book Italian Folktales and features shapes and motifs first explored in Stella’s Had Gadya (1982-84) prints, which the artist based on El Lissitzky’s 1918-19 paintings of the same title.