Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin was an American artist and pioneer of Minimalism, best known for his seminal installations of light fixtures. For more than three decades, Flavin vigorously pursued the artistic possibilities of fluorescent light, producing a singularly consistent and prodigious body of work that utilized fluorescent lamps to create installations, or “situations”, of light and color. Arranging commercially available fluorescent tubing in standard sizes, shapes, and colors into differing geometric compositions, Flavin radically extracted banal hardware from its utilitarian context and inserted it into the world of high art. His illuminated sculptures establish and redefine space, offering a rigorous formal and conceptual investigation of space and light.

Born in 1933 in Jamaica, NY, Flavin showed an interest in art during his early adulthood, and went on to study at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts before attending Columbia University. Flavin’s first solo exhibitions were held at the Judson Gallery in 1961 and the Green Gallery in 1964, both in New York, and the artist’s work would continue to be presented internationally over the course of the following decades at venues including the St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri (1973); Kunsthalle Basel (1975); Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1975); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1986); and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1992), among others. Today, his works can be found in significant international museum collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Ho-Am Art Museum, Seoul; Kunstmuseum Basel; Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.