Carl Andre

Carl Andre was an innovative American artist who became highly influential in the art of the 1960s and 1970s, when he was at the forefront of the Minimalist movement in the United States.
In the 1950s, after being introduced to the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, Carl Andre began creating geometric abstract sculptures from wood and Perspex. During the 1960s, he moved away from the tradition of vertical sculpture and started using industrial materials in his work. Andre reduced sculpture to its most essential form by placing blocks of material directly on the floor, arranging them into mathematical patterns, grids, and linear compositions on a horizontal plane.
In creating these works, Carl Andre used only standard, commercially available materials such as industrial bricks, wood, lead, steel, copper, magnesium, and aluminum. None of these materials were altered, allowing each component to retain its original character. He also experimented with bent pipes and scattered blocks, and created visual poems by arranging individual words and phrases on paper, emphasizing their visual appearance rather than their literal meaning.
In 1972, an article in a British newspaper sparked controversy over the nature of contemporary art focusing particularly on his work Equivalent III, an arrangement of firebricks. While on display at a major London art museum, the work was subsequently defaced by a member of the public. (Artist website)