Minimalist sculptor Carl Andre is a pioneering American artist who blazed a trail in the modern art scene of the 1960s and 70s. Using plain, basic materials such as wood, bricks and copper, his unique sculptures took the form away from the convention of creating works on the vertical access and used grids and the horizontal plane as his medium. After an inspirational encounter with Constantin Brancusi, a sculptor from Romania early on in his career, Andre went on to produce geometric works in Perspex and wood in the abstract style. His period of real innovation began in the 1960s when he moved into using industrial materials including lead, steel, magnesium and aluminium among others and arranged them horizontally using geometric forms and mathematical patterns, designed on a grid. He never changed the nature of the materials, which gave these pieces a raw, unfiltered style.
Another of Andre’s inventions was in the form of visual poetry. Rather than seeking to convey meaning with his choice of words, he arranged the phrases to create a certain visual style and express his vision this way. His work courted controversy at times, including when his sculpture ‘Equivalent VIII’ was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London in 1972. It was defaced with blue food dye and sparked an ongoing debate about contemporary art in Britain.
