Biography

Carl Andre was an American Minimal artist and poet. In 1954 he worked for Boston Gear Works and travelled to Europe and France. He then served in the US Army from 1955 to 1956. In 1957 Andre moved to New York City where he worked for a publisher, wrote poetry and made drawings and abstract sculptures in Perspex and wood, with geometric forms influenced by the artists Constantin Brancusi and his close friend, Frank Stella. From 1960 to 1964 Andre worked as a railroad brakeman and conductor on the Pennsylvania Railroad. The few sculptures that were made during this time showed a move away from carving to works constructed out of simple blocks of wood. Andre’s sculpture was first publicly exhibited in a group show in 1964, followed by a one-man exhibition at the Tiber de Nagy Gallery in New York and later, a major retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1970. Andre continued to make floor sculptures out of standard industrial units such as bricks or metal plates in simple arithmetic combinations and experimented with scattered blocks and pieces of bent pipe. He lived and worked in New York.