Fred Sandback

Fred Sandback was an American minimalist conceptual-based sculptor known for his yarn sculptures, drawings, and prints. His estate is represented by David Zwirner, New York.

Frederick Lane Sandback was born in Bronxville, New York where, as a young man, he made banjos and dulcimers. He majored in philosophy at Yale University (BA, 1966) before studying sculpture at Yale School of Art (MFA, 1969) where he studied with, among others, visiting instructors Donald Judd and Robert Morris.

Sandback is primarily known for his Minimalist works made from lengths of colored yarn. The artist's early interest in stringed musical instruments led him to make dulcimers and banjos as a teenager. In 1967, he 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 he employed metal wire and elastic cord early in his career, the artist soon dispensed with mass and weight by using acrylic yarn. His yarn, elastic cord, and wire sculptures define edges of virtual shapes that ask the viewer's brain to perceive the rest of the form. In that way his work can be considered visionary or imaginative, as well as minimal and literal. Indeed, Sandback was fond of installing "corner" pieces whose shadows assist with this form completion process. In describing his work he stated, "It's a consequence of wanting the volume of sculpture without the opaque mass that I have the lines." and "I did have a strong gut feeling from the beginning though, and that was wanting to be able to make sculpture that didn't have an inside." Sandback himself referred to his sculptures operating in pedestrian space, acknowledging both the viewer's movement through a space and as something to be engaged actively.

Sandback died by suicide in his studio in New York City on June 23, 2003.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023