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Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an United
States|American minimalism|minimalist artist.

Andre was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, and after
studying art in the States and in Europe became an
intelligence officer with the United States Army
in North Carolina. In 1957 he moved to New York
City to work as an editor, and in the early 1960s
worked as a railroad conductor on the Pennsylvania
Railroad. His first solo show came in 1965.

Andre's work has been typified by the use of
natural or simple commercially available
materials, such as bricks, metal plates or
concrete blocks, stacked or arranged side by side
in simple patterns. One of his first distinctive
works is Cedar Piece, which consists of pieces of
wood stacked on top of one another in a tall
column. Andre cited the wooden sculptures of
Constantin Brancusi as an influence in this and
similar works.

A little later in the 1960s, Andre began to make
so-called "scatter pieces", which consisted of
pieces of a particular material arranged,
apparently at random, on the floor. Later came
pieces such as 10 x 10 Altstadt Copper Square
(1967), a ten by ten arrangement of 100 copper
tiles on the floor. Andre has made a number of
similar pieces, sometimes using just one kind of
metal, sometimes using two and arranging them in a
chessboard pattern. The viewer is free to walk
over these pieces, if they so choose.

Andre made a series of works called Equivalents,
all of them arrangements of 120 identical bricks
in simple patterns. In 1972 the Tate Gallery in
London bought his Equivalent VIII (1966), which
four years later was the subject of an outcry from
parts of the media, who accused them of wasting
public money.

Since the earliest time in his career, Andre has
also produced concrete poetry. Many have seen the
arrangement of words on the page in these poems as
reflecting the arrangement of units on the floor
in his sculptures.

Andre was married to the Performance Artist Ana
Mendieta until her death in 1985. He was tried and
acquitted for her murder.