Fred Sandback

Deploying light, shadow, scale and gravity, Fred Sandback’s work creates striking perceptual effects in response to the surrounding architecture. Using commercial acrylic yarn, Sandback usually traces the space between different points on floors, ceilings, and walls, creating shapes by outlining planes or volumes and constructing the illusion of a pane of glass or shimmering lines of color.

Fred Sandback was born in Bronxville, New York in 1943 and died in New York City in 2003. He was educated at Williston Academy (1957-1961) and Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium in Heilbronn, West Germany (1961-1962). He studied phi­losophy at Yale University (1962-1966) and received an MFA from Yale’s School of Art and Architecture in 1969. Since the late sixties, his work has been featured in numerous group and individual exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Notable individual exhibitions include Dia Art Foundation, New York (1988), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2003); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2011); and Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland (2015). In 1981, the Fred Sandback Museum was established in Winchendon, Massachusetts under the sponsorship of Dia Art Foundation. The Fred Sandback Archive was established in 2007, primarily to create and maintain an archival resource on the artist’s art. Sandback’s work is represented in numerous public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

DOWNLOAD CV