Carl Andre

[image via artistquoteoftheday.files.wordpress.com]

b. 1935

Andre is a Minimalist who started making art as a profession at the age of 24. His first serious works were highly influenced by his friend, Frank Stella, and typically took the form of wooden sculptures. Others were form poetry or Concrete poems that present words as drawings.

Glarus, image via Galerie Tschudi

After a short stints with other careers, he returned to art in 1970 and created several of his largest installations, including Blocks and Stones which he created for the Portland Center of Visual Arts. In 1972, his installation Equivalent VII created in 1966 traveled to London’s Tate. The piece was often called “Bricks” and featured more than 100 firebricks arranged in a large rectangle The 1970s saw creations of other installations, like Stone Field, created in Hartford.

In 1988, he was acquitted of the murder of his wife, the artist Ana Mendieta.

Retrospectives of his work have been exhibited around the world, including New York’s Guggenheim in 1970 and later retrospectives in Austin, Oxford, Einhoven and Marseilles.

Cooper Galaxy via www.carlandre.net