The artwork “batis-batis” belongs to Frank Stella’s sculptural series “The Bali Pieces”, created between 2003 and 2006. The Bali series is deeply inspired by the anthropologists Margaret Mead’s and Gregory Bateson’s photographic and behavioural studies of children in Bali during the 1930s and 1940s. The works in the Bali series are unique, with titles taken from the Balinese language and deliberately written in lower case. The word “batis” means foot or leg in Balinese. The forms of the sculptures are inspired by the children’s patterns of movement, poses and bodily positions. The sculptural work “batis-batis” can be likened to a large-scale three-dimensional painting executed in steel and carbon fibre. Despite its seemingly light and elegant construction, “batis-batis” appears to forcefully spiral out into the physical space. Is it the child’s intense play that we are following, or something else? Stella’s artistic development moves continually forward in its interpretation of movement, across multiple dimensions and with the aid of the latest materials.

Frank Stella is regarded as one of the most influential American artists, above all for his ability to blur the boundary between painting and sculpture. Stella is best known for his use of geometric patterns and forms in both paintings and sculptures. He explored form, colour and composition in order to achieve the precise expression he was seeking. At the beginning of his career, he worked in a minimalist and geometric style; over the years, his expression became increasingly maximalist, larger and three-dimensional. As early as the 1960s, he began working with printmaking and, together with master printer Kenneth Tyler at Gemini G.E.L., produced several of his most popular prints, including the motif offered in this auction, from the early 1970s.

Frank Stella has exhibited at countless galleries and institutions around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). He was represented at MoMA as early as 1965, when Op art achieved its major international breakthrough in the groundbreaking exhibition “The Responsive Eye”. Frank Stella’s art was shown alongside works by, among others, Ellsworth Kelly, Bridget Riley and Vasarely.

Frank Stella has been honoured with numerous retrospective exhibitions, most recently at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2016, and is one of the few artists to have had two solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1970 and 1987. Over the years, he has had several exhibitions at Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm, most recently in spring 2023. His works are held in the collections of leading museums around the world.