Dan Flavin is born in New York in 1933. Initially he is trained as a priest, but gives this up to join his twin brother, who has joined the Air Force. During his service period (1954-1955), Flavin is trained as a meteorologist. He attends an art course at the University of Maryland in South Korea. Back in the United States, he continues his art education in New York.
As an art student, Flavin has jobs at the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. At the MoMA he meets artists such as Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard and Robert Ryman. By then, his own art career has begun. In 1961 he marries Sonja Severdija, an art history student who also works at the MoMA. Flavin develops as a minimalist, and from 1963 on, he fully focuses on creating light sculptures and installations based on fluorescent tubes, often commissioned. In 1986, he makes an installation for the central stairs of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 2011, this work – as a tailpiece of the major renovation of the museum – is carried out again.
In 1992 Flavin marries his second wife, artist Tracy Harris. In 1996 he dies in New York from complications due to diabetes.