Frank Stella

Cinema de Pepsi Sketch I

Cinema de Pepsi Sketch I is among Frank Stella’s maze-like works, initiated in 1962, that have mitered, or joined, corners. The inclusion of four diagonal lines in this work innovates previous maze designs by creating a quartet of mitered triangular sections. Stella’s Mitered Maze works address the different ways in which color and gray scale can alter a painting’s impact; some are painted in vivid, prismatic colors, while others are painted in black, white, and tones of gray.

In Cinema de Pepsi Sketch I, the range of gray scale relates to the expanding design of the work’s composition in a way that evenly valued colors cannot. Stella’s production preceding the Mitered Maze paintings emphasized flatness. Here, for the first time in Stella’s work, the shift between light and dark creates an illusion of spatial depth.