Renowned for its lightweight, strength, and ductility, aluminum is a metal frequently used in sculpture and metalworking. Aluminum can be melted and cast into sculptural forms using various mold processes, including sand casting and lost wax casting. The metal makes an appropriate material for outdoor sculpture because it is resistant to corrosion. The husband-and-wife artist team Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen often used aluminum in their large-scale outdoor sculptural installations. Alexander Calder also employed aluminum, often in combination with other metals such as steel, to create his celebrated mobile sculptures. Seeking to remove the mark of the artist’s hand from their work, Minimalist sculptors, in particular Donald Judd, worked with industrial-type substances, including aluminum. Many of Judd’s so-called “stacks,” identical boxes mounted on a wall in a vertical arrangement, incorporate aluminum and cultivate a mass-produced aesthetic.

Other artists use recycled aluminum in their work—the artist El Anatsui creates enormous, tapestry-like wall hangings out of discarded scraps of aluminum from his native Ghana. The red, gold, and black color schemes of these hangings resemble traditional kente cloths made by Ghanaian weavers. Still more artists, including Alex Katz and Vik Muniz, have used sheets of aluminum as a support for printing imagery. Other contemporary artists who have used aluminum in their work include Thor Vigfússon, Pablo Accinelli, Frank Stella, and Martin Kippenberger.