Tahkt-I-Sulayman Variation II

In 1967, Frank Stella began a series of brightly colored paintings based on the protractor, a drafting tool used for measuring and making angles. With this device he made three semicircular designs including the one you see here, called the “rainbow.” These designs are the basis for the many paintings in his Protractor series. Stella titled the works after circular cities and archaeological sites he saw on a 1963 trip to the Middle East: Tahkt-i-Sulayman is an ancient shrine in Iran’s Azerbaijan province. But Stella has insisted that the meaning of his work is purely formal: “My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object...You can see the whole idea without any confusion. What you see is what you see.”