Fred Sandback

Bronxville, NY, 1943 - 2003, New York, NY

BiographyFred Sandback, Sculptor of Minimalist Installations, Dies at 59
By KEN JOHNSON

Fred Sandback, a sculptor internationally known for his Minimalist works made from lengths of colored yarn, died on Monday at his studio in New York. He was 59.

Mr. Sandback, who suffered from depression, committed suicide, said his wife, Amy Baker Sandback.

For almost 40 years, Mr. Sandback persisted in using the simplest of means to create subtly complex perceptual effects. His most characteristic works were composed of store-bought acrylic yarns in various colors, which he would stretch between different points on the walls, ceilings and floors of exhibition spaces. In response to the architecture of a particular interior, he might produce floor-to-ceiling verticals or he might outline closed forms like parallelograms, rhombuses or triangles.

To the viewer's eye, the thin, slightly fuzzy yarn would seem to lose its physical presence and turn into dematerialized lines of color. His compositions also had another uncanny illusionistic effect: the colored lines seemed like the edges of transparent, glasslike planes.

This paradoxical play with material fact and perceptual illusion had philosophical implications. Like other Minimalists, Mr. Sandback wanted to focus the viewer's awareness on the here and now, to avoid directing the imagination toward anything not immediately present. Without any solid object or symbolic reference, his works promoted a heightened sensitivity to the experience of being and moving about in space and to ways that perceptions can alter the bare facts.

The artist traveled internationally to install his works at galleries and museums, carrying all the materials he needed in a single bag.

Frederick Lane Sandback was born in Bronxville, N.Y., on Aug. 29, 1943. After majoring in philosophy at Yale, he went on to the Yale School of Art and Architecture, earning an M.F.A. degree in sculpture in 1969. Decisively influenced as a student by the visiting instructors Donald Judd and Robert Morris, founders of the Minimalist movement, Mr. Sandback started creating simple, linear structures by bending and welding lengths of thin steel rod.

In 1967, Mr. Sandback produced the sculpture that would establish the terms of his mature work. Using string and wire, he outlined the shape of a 20-foot-long 2-by-4 board lying on the floor. Though in fact they contained nothing but air, the lines read as the edges of an almost visible object. From that piece it was a short but significant step to the manipulation of space itself.

Success came early for Mr. Sandback. In 1968, while still a student at Yale, he had his first two solo exhibitions, both in Germany. One was at the Munich gallery of Heiner Friedrich, who helped create the Dia Art Foundation in New York in 1974. Mr. Sandback was one of a small group of avant garde artists sponsored by the Dia Center for the Arts. Like several of them, Mr. Sandback opened a Dia-financed institution dedicated to his own work, the Fred Sandback Museum. Housed in a former bank building in Winchendon, Mass., not far from his studio in Rindge, N.H., the museum operated from 1981 until 1996, when the artist decided to close it. Works by Mr. Sandback are included in a current major exhibition at Dia:Beacon, the recently opened museum of contemporary art in Beacon, N.Y.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Sandback is survived by two children from a previous marriage, Peter Sandback of Hancock, N.H., and Annika Sandback of Hoboken, and two grandchildren.

NY Times obituary, 6/26/03

Person TypeIndividual

Terms