Early in their careers, Carl Andre, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin were among the Minimalist artists who recognised in Constantin Brancusi a kindred spirit. As perhaps the most important innovator of three-dimensional art in the twentieth century, Brancusi created variations of elemental forms through the simplification and refinement of shape and surface. Brancusi's Endless Column and the pedestals he created to integrate his abstract sculptures into their environment were two of the main sources of inspiration for the use of symmetry and the repetition of elements by these artists in their own sculptural work.

In Blue Wood Chain, 1964, Andre has created a Brancusi-like totem. From the fertile ground of New York City in the early 1960's, Andre absorbed the avant-garde ideas around him. In addition to the influence of Brancusi, Andre was aware of his close friend Frank Stella's paintings of repeated stripes (the Black, Copper, Aluminum and Purple Series, 1958-1963; see Lot 5, Ileana Sonnabend, from the Purple Series). In a similar spirit, Andre constructed Blue Wood Chain in a systematic configuration of size and shape, utilized repeatedly throughout the sculpture. Furthermore, the sculpture's primary blue color reflects the influence of Judd's single-color, cadmium-red light floor sculptures which were exhibited at The Green Gallery in New York in 1963.