The son of a musician, Ludwig Sander was a painter and printmaker best known for his austere, highly controlled geometric abstractions incorporating elements of color field theory.

At the beginning of his career, Sander studied with Alexander Archipenko and Hans Hofmann, the latter of whom encouraged his move away from figuration to a more abstract approach.

In 1949 he co-founded The Club, an association and discussion group for artists in New York whose sixteen members included Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Al Reinhardt, Conrad Marca Reilli and Jack Tworkov. Among its several non-artist members was Leo Castelli, whose New York gallery showcased cutting contemporary art for five decades beginning in 1957. In 1951 Castelli hung the now-famous Ninth Street Show in which Sander participated, the first public presentation of the group of abstract artists that soon became known as the New York School. Sander also belonged to the 10th Street Artists Group, a loose confederation of abstract artists based in New York.

Sander’s signature style is characterized by flat planes of complementary colors traversed by horizontal and vertical lines and constructed by building up opaque layers of paint within each section of the canvas. The resulting effect is calming and contemplative, radiating a cool and muted lyricism.

Group Exhibitions: Leo Castelli Gallery, New York (1959, with Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and Norman Bluhm); “Abstract Expressionists,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1961); Venice Biennale (1964); “Post-Painterly Abstraction,” Los Angeles County Museum (1964); “Responsive Eye,” Museum of Modern Art, New York; Corcoran Biennials, Washington, DC (1967, 1975; “Neue-Kunst, U.S.A.,” Modern Art Museum, Munich, Germany (1968); “Plus by Minus, Today’s Half Century,” Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York (1968); “Salon des Realities Novelles,” Paris, France (1968); “A Contemporary Selection 1968,” Dayton Art Institute, Ohio (1968); “Form of Color,” Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio (1970); “Whitney Biennial,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1973); “Two Decades of American Painting,” Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1973); “Less is More: The Influence of the Bauhaus on American Art,” Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida (1974); and “17 Abstract Artists of East Hampton: The Pollock Years, 1946-56,” Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York (1980); “Geometric Forms in Abstraction,” American Contemporary Art Gallery, Munich, Germany (2001); “Painting Exposition: 1958-1963,” Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas (2003); “Geometric Abstraction and Color Function: Two Generations,” D. Wigmore Fine Art, New York (2006); “Raymond Hendler and Artists from His ‘Avant Garde’ Circle,” Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York (2008); “Abstract Ensemble,” ACA Galleries, New York (2009).

Museum Collections: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, all in New York City; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; M.I.T. Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Rose Art Museum Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; James A. Michener Foundation, Allentown, Pennsylvania; Corcoran Gallery of Art (now, National Gallery of Art), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Art Institute of Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Art Institute of Chicago; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; James A. Michener Foundation, University of Texas, Austin; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California.


(Biographical information from Artsy, Modernist West)