Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary
— Carl Andre
A pivotal figure in American art since the 1960s, Carl Andre (1935–2024) alongside figures such as Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt, was one of the founders of Minimalism. Andre's practice was devoted to exploring the essence of material through clear, geometric structures. His sculptures, characterised by their disciplined simplicity, are composed of unaltered found materials, such as bricks, wood, and metal or stone tiles, arranged according to the inherent properties of the materials and the spaces they occupy.
His major retrospectives and key solo exhibitions span the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1970); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1973); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (including Waterbodies, 1973); Kunsthalle Bern, Bern (1975); and culminate in the large-scale traveling survey Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958-2010, presented at Dia: Beacon (2014-2015), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2015), Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2016), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2016-2017), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles (2017).
His work is held in prominent public collections including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.