Carl Andre, one of the most influential and ascetic pioneers of Minimalist sculpture, whose career was overshadowed by the accusation that he played a role in the death of his wife, the Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by Steven Henry, a senior partner with the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, which represented Mr. Andre. Mr. Andre helped establish the terms of Minimalism, which shifted the focus of art in the 1960s away from the heroic gestures of Abstract Expressionism toward rudimentary forms and industrial materials. He was a practitioner of the movement at perhaps its most austere, working primarily from a limited range of elemental metals along with granite, wood and brick. Typically employed in the standard forms in which any contractor could order them from a foundry or quarry, the materials were arranged directly on the ground, with a plainness and Pythagorean purity that brought to mind cairns or sacred tessellation.

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Persons: Carl Andre, Ana Mendieta, Steven Henry, Paula Cooper, Andre, Mr Locations: Cuban American, Manhattan, New York