By Chuck Myers
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A tempest has settled in at the National Gallery of Art. This storm, however, doesn't come with the expected high winds and torrential rains, but with a static whirlwind of white fiberglass, aluminum and surging black carbon fiber forms created by renowned American artist Frank Stella.

A new abstract sculpture by Stella has taken up residence on the northeast corner of the National Gallery's East Building grounds, in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. The work, "Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, Ein Schauspiel, 3X," is the first monumental sculpture to become part of a public collection in the United States. At 31-by-39-by-34 feet, the piece is also Stella's largest sculpture to date.

Stella's enormous creation exudes grace and force, with a hint of chaos.

Swirling white fiberglass shapes constitute the outer areas of the sculpture, enveloping the work like a series of small twisters. Stella derived the shapes from a cutout Styrofoam beach hat that he manipulated into an abstract form. The black carbon shapes that arc out of the piece's inner space were adopted from computerized images of smoke rings.

The sculpture borrows its title from a play by early-19th-century German playwright Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), which explored the inner conflict between logic and emotion.

Weighing nearly 10 tons, the sculpture is supported by a series of stainless steel legs and stays anchored to pillions sunk 30 feet into the ground.

The 65-year-old artist said he spent about three years working on the massive artwork, constructing it at the Polich Art Works foundry in upstate New York.

Stella began his artistic career as a painter in the late 1950s, and is generally credited with laying the foundation for the minimalist art style. After a fruitful exploration of three-dimensional painting, Stella turned his creative energies to sculpture in the 1980s.

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