Playskool Gym, from the Playskool series

Description

Beginning in the early 1980s, Frank Stella developed the nine-piece "Playskool" series of wall reliefs. "Playskool Gym" is a visual Tinker-Toy that includes wood, irregularly-shaped metal objects, and found objects— including steel rods, ratcheted discs, and a paintbrush. These elements invade the surrounding space and invite the viewer to move around the piece in order to engage with it. "Playskool" refers to the extremely popular early-learning toys produced for young children by the Fisher-Price Company. Stella created his own line of "late-learning" educational toys for mental gymnastics, a "jungle gym" of poles and bars designed for curious and inventive viewers to climb, swing, jump and otherwise exercise their minds. Not coincidentally, early versions of the "Playskool Gym" were done during the year that his son was born.
Massachusetts-born Frank Stella is primarily known as a painter of huge canvases. He is also known for being a pioneer of Post-Painterly Abstraction, a staunch reaction to the Abstract Expressionists’ domination of the New York galleries in the 1950s. Post-Painterly Abstractionists believed that the physical materials and qualities of a work of art were what should be celebrated, rather than emotional associations or intellectual references.
(A. Dixon, 20th Century Gallery installation, June 1999)