Carl Andre

Carl Andre was an innovative American artist who became highly influential on the art of the 1960s and 70s, when he was at the forefront of the Minimalist movement in the United States. In the 1950s, when Carl Andre was introduced to the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, he began to create geometric abstract sculptures made from wood andPerspex. He moved away from tradition of creating vertical sculptures in the 1960s when he started to make use of industrial materials in his art. Carl Andre began to reduce sculpture to its most basic form by placing blocks of material directly on the floor, to form mathematical patterns, grids and linear arrangements on a horizontal plane. In creating these forms Carl Andre only makes use of standard materials that are commercially available, such as industrial bricks, wood, lead, steel, copper, magnesium and aluminum. None of these materials are altered by Carl Andre, so the components of his work will always retain their original character. He has also experimented with bent pipes and scattered blocks and has created visual poems by arranging single words and phrases on paper, more for how they look than for what they mean. In 1972 an article in a British newspaper sparked a controversy over the nature of contemporary art, with particular reference to his piece Equivalent III, an arrangement of firebricks, which was subsequently defaced by a member of the public when it was on display at a major art museum in London. (Artist website)