Keith Sonnier

The US American artist Keith Sonnier (1941-2020) rose to prominence in the 1960s with works that broadened the traditional understanding of sculpture and used everyday materials such as neon tubes, latex, foam or found industrial materials. He belongs to the generation of post-minimalists that includes Gary Kuehn, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris and Richard Serra, and is one of the first and most important artists to discover light as an independent medium. Through his continuous experimentation he created sculptures and room installations with directly or indirectly illuminated elements. Keith Sonnier was part of the iconic exhibitions "Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form" at the Kunsthalle Bern, 1969 and "Eccentric Abstraction" at the Fischbach Gallery in New York, 1966. In 2018, the Parrish Art Museum and the New Orleans Museum of Art presented comprehensive retrospectives of the artist.


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