"One might not think of light as a matter of fact, but I do. And it is, as I said, as plain and open and direct an art as you will ever find."
Born in Queens, New York, Dan Flavin made light itself his medium. In 1963 he completed the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi), a single yellow fluorescent tube fixed to the wall at an angle. From then on he worked exclusively with standard, commercially available fluorescent fixtures in a limited range of colors and lengths. Using these ordinary hardware-store materials, he created works that go beyond the object on the wall: the light spreads into the surrounding space, tints the walls and floor, and changes how viewers experience the room.
Flavin often dedicated his works to artists, friends, and historical figures. The best known of these is his long-running series of "monuments" for the Russian Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin. Late in his career he took on architectural-scale commissions, including a permanent installation at Richmond Hall at the Menil Collection in Houston and the lighting of the church of Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, Milan. He finished the design for the Milan project just days before his death in 1996.
A major retrospective, organized by the Dia Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, opened in 2004 and toured internationally. Flavin's work is held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate in London, and Dia:Beacon, which keeps a large group of his installations on long-term view.