Fred Sandback

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (September 2007)

Fred Sandback (August 29, 1943 – June 23, 2003) was an American sculptor who struck a chord with his impossibly simple, space defining structures of string, wire and painted yarn.

Fred was born in Bronxville, New York where, as a young man, he made banjos and dulcimers. He majored in philosophy at Yale before studying sculpture with Donald Judd and Robert Morris and received a BFA in 1966 and an MFA in 1969 from the Yale Art and Architecture Building.

As the story goes, in 1967, George Sugarman, responding to Sandback's grousing about sculpture and sculptural practices during a crit, snapped at him "Stretch a piece string between two points and leave it be."

Sandback followed this advice and recalled, "The first sculpture I made with a piece of string and a little wire, was the outline of a rectangular solid -- a 2" x 4" -- lying on the floor. It was a casual act, but it seemed to open up a lot of possibilities for me."

He started exhibiting his work while still a student in 1968 with two solo shows in Germany at the Galerie Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf, and the Galerie Heiner Friedrich in Munich; Friedrich was the co-founder of the Dia Art Foundation. In 1981, the Dia Art Foundation initiated and maintained a museum of his work in an old bank building, the Fred Sandback Museum in Winchendon, Massachusetts, which Sandback closed in 1996.

Throughout his career, Sandback actively exhibited work in the US and overseas. His yarn/wire/string structures define edges of shapes that ask the viewer's brain to perceive the rest of the form. He is fond of installing "corner" pieces whose shadows assist with this form completion process. In describing his work he states, "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."

In 2003, several large Sandback works were permanently installed at Dia in New York.

Saddled with depression, Sandback committed suicide in his studio at the age of 59.

[edit] References

Joan Simon, Art in America (Brant Publications Inc., Gale Group, May 1997)
Sandback, Fred, Fred Sandback, Sculpture 1966-1986 (Mannheim: Kunsthalle 1986)
Stephanie Cash, David Ebony, Art in America: Obituaries (Brant Publications Inc., Gale Group, Sept 2003)
Friedemann Malsch, Christiane Meyer-Stoll (Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein), "Fred Sandback", Published by Hatje-Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany, 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1720-X