Charles Biederman (1906–2004), a Minnesota artist who made his home in Red Wing, was one of the first artists to work in a completely abstract geometric language as a way to responding to the dynamic forces that make up our world. This piece hangs in Carleton’s Boliou Hall, a precocious example of modernist architecture on a rural college campus. The relief is a perfect fit with Boliou because its style and use of primary colors, particularly the bold use of red, complement the building’s design.
This untitled piece is a gift from Lydia Hedin ’33. Her husband, a doctor, commissioned the work to decorate the Interstate Medical Clinic, which in 1940 was one of the first modernist medical buildings in southern Minnesota.