We have all seen these paintings but, I’m not sure that we’ve all spent the time to really contemplate with Frank Stella meant to the art world and to our culture today. Stella died yesterday at 87 and left a big, bold and colorful mark on the world.

In 1959, Frank Stella’s “black paintings” challenged our senses and set in motion a career that spanned more than six decades. He was a painter, sculptor and printmaker whose practice stands as one of the icons of the minimalist and post-painterly abstraction art movements. When the Whitney Museum reopened in October 2015, they chose Frank Stella for their benchmark exhibition, and it was among the most compelling exhibitions I’ve ever seen.

Very simply, Stella influenced a generation or two of artists who are working today and his use of color and his bold artistic sensibility will be remembered for generations to come.