Carl Andre

Carl Andre, born in 1935, American sculptor, a prominent figure in the abstract-art movement known as minimalism. Andre was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, and studied at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, from 1951 to 1953. In 1957 he moved to New York City, where he met American abstract artist Frank Stella, with whom he shared a studio in 1959. He then worked for four years on the Pennsylvania Railroad before gaining international fame as a minimalist artist in the late 1960s.

Andre's early works, such as Last Ladder (1959, Tate Gallery, London, England), were heavily influenced by the sculptures of Romanian-born French artist Constantin Brancusi. Like Brancusi's outdoor sculpture Endless Column (1937, in Tirgu Jiu, Romania), Andre's early works were carved in wood, vertically oriented, and connected directly to the floor, and they contained repetitions of forms that evoked a sense of the infinite. However, Andre's experience as the engineer of a train and as a railroad guard from 1960 to 1964 influenced his style dramatically, and by 1964 he began to produce minimalist sculptures. These were made up of identical mass-produced objects arranged flat on the floor and were described by him as being “more like roads than like buildings.” They were composed according to precise mathematical systems and recalled not only Brancusi's influence but also the repetitious forms of railway cars along a track. In 1972 the Tate Gallery in London acquired Equivalent VIII (1966; remade 1969), an arrangement of bricks on the floor of the gallery. Because of its high cost and its use of mass-produced materials, the work aroused a bitter debate in the press. Andre also created works from many other materials, including metal plates, stones, and blocks of wood. Altstadt Rectangle (1967, Guggenheim Museum, New York City) consists of 100 hot-rolled steel plates arranged on the floor like tiles.

As well as being an influential figure in modern sculpture, Andre has been active as a writer, creating poems consisting of visually ordered, nongrammatical patterns of words.