The Black Paintings are a series of 24 minimalism related works executed by the painter and sculptor Frank Stella (1936–2024) in the late 1950s and 1960 in what is seen as being a response to abstract expressionism.
Stella used commercial enamel paint and a house-painter's brush, he painted black stripes of the same width and evenly spaced on bare canvas, leaving the thin strips of canvas between them unpainted and exposed, along with his pencil-and-ruler drawn guideline.
Four paintings from the series were included in the seminal exhibition at MoMA curated by Dorothy Miller, Sixteen Americans.
The title of this work which means Raise the Flag!, in German, is taken from the anthem of the Nazi Party, the "Horst-Wessel-Lied", and is one of three paintings in the series which makes direct reference to Nazism.
[4] Some of the earrly works from this series were shown in the 2006 exhibition "1958" which originated at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and focused on this seminal period of Stella's career.