"My art springs from my desire to have things in the work which would otherwise never be there."
Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) was an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Andre was one of the defining figures of Minimalism. He reshaped sculpture by laying it flat. Working with industrial materials such as metal plates, timber, bricks, and stone, he arranged standardized units in lines and grids directly on the floor or ground. Viewers could walk across many of these works, which made sculpture a matter of place and experience rather than a raised object.
In 2014, Dia:Beacon organized a major retrospective of Andre's work. It then traveled to the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. His sculptures are held in leading public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.