YAZD III

YAZD III belongs to Stella's Protractor series, begun in 1967 and concluded in 1971. The Protractor series, which consists of ninety-three paintings based on thirty-one distinct formats, each one rendered in three different designs, represents the artist's initial engagement with curvilinear compositions. Like other works from the series, YAZD III is distinguished by its palette, a combination of fluorescent, pastel, and neutral hues, as well as its shaped canvas, whose overall structure derives from the overlap of two protractor-motifs, one facing up, the other down. The composition consists of precisely rendered polygons, mostly triangles that form outstretched fans, their arrangement deduced from the shape of the canvas. While the title of YAZD III refers to the ancient city of Yazd, capital of the Yazd Province in Iran and now a World Heritage Site, Khurasan Gate, the name of the format on which the painting is based, refers to the entrance to the Great Khorasan Road in the central core of Baghdad, built in the 8th century. The Great Khorasan Road was an important trade route, part of a network of economic, cultural, and geographic exchange connecting Baghdad with the northeastern province of Khorasan, now part of Iran, and beyond, to Central Asia and China. All of the paintings in Stella's Protractor series take their titles from ancient cities with circular plans in the Near and Middle East, an area to which Stella had started traveling in 1963 and whose artistic production fascinated him.