Dan Flavin was born April 1, 1933 in Queens, New York. Flavin attended parochial school and prepatory school for the seminary in Brooklyn. In 1953, he enlisted in the Air Force where he trained as a meteorological technician. While working as a meteorological aide, Flavin began making and collecting art and visiting museums in Washington D.C., and New York. In the late 1950's, Flavin attended Columbia University and studied Art History.
Flavin first showed in interest in fluorescent light in 1961, the same year he began to work on his icons series. In the icons series, incandescent and fluorescent blubs are attached to shallow, square box forms, often made of various materials such as wood, Formica, or Masonite. In 1963, Flavin began working with fluorescent light alone, as seen in his Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy (the Diagonal of May 25, 1963), where Flavin positioned a fluorescent light at a diagonal on a gallery wall.
Flavin's art is often ascribed to the Minimalist movement, although he never approved of the term. His close friends at this time were Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Carl Andre. The minimalists created objects that defied conventions of both paintings and sculpture, a quality that distinguishes Flavin's fluorescent light construction. Large-scale works became a focus of Flavin's later career, with site-specific lights commissioned for such spaces at the rotunda at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and a converted church in Bridgehampton, New York, which as established in 1983 as the Dan Flavin Art Institute.
Dan Flavin died November 29, 1996 in Riverhead, New York.
