NEW YORK, NY.- John McCracken, a West Coast Minimalist artist who became known in the 1960s for his singular sculptural forms, has died in New York on April 8, 2011 due to complications from a long illness. He was 76. McCracken developed his earliest sculptural work while studying painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in the 1960s. While experimenting with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, the artist began to produce objects made with industrial techniques and materials, including plywood, sprayed lacquer, and pigmented resin, creating the highly-reflective, smooth surfaces that he was to become known for. McCracken’s earliest sculptures took the form of wall reliefs and free-standing geometric forms, and, in 1966, he generated his signature sculptural