Untitled (to Ellen Johnson, fondly)

A self-taught artist and one of the founders of Minimalism, Dan Flavin abandoned his early paintings incorporating objects in 1961 to create sculptures using incandescent or fluorescent lights. He creates installations that are celebrated not for their concrete form but for the magical glow of their light, the way they illuminate architectural space, and the range of emotions they evoke.

The AMAM collection includes two fluorescent sculptures by Flavin: Untitled (to Ellen Johnson, fondly), a four-foot-wide piece with red, pink, and yellow fluorescent lights; and Untitled (to Charles Cowles), a work from 1963 composed of two eightfoot- long tubes of daylight and blue fluorescent lights. Flavin's Untitled works are characteristically dedicated to friends, colleagues, and fellow artists. The AMAM's examples honor Oberlin College professor Ellen Johnson and art dealer and collector Charles Cowles, who, at the time of the dedication, was publisher of Art Forum. In the absence of explicit subject matter, these tributes make personal connections with the piece.

Flavin donated Untitled (to Ellen Johnson, fondly) to an auction at Christie's in New York, which had been organized in 1975 as a benefit to support the construction of the AMAM's Ellen Johnson Gallery. Paul F. Walter (OC 1957), an Oberlin student who later became a friend of Johnson and an important New York collector and AMAM donor, purchased the work at the sale and presented it to the museum after the Johnson Gallery was completed.