Minimalism Art Movement, 1960

Piet Mondrian 1872-1944

Minimalism Art Movement, also called ABC Art, Minimal Art, Literalist Art, Reductivism, Rejective Art, emerged in New York in the early 1960s, in which the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect.

Is a school of abstract painting and sculpture that emphasizes extreme simplification of form, as by the use of basic shapes and monochromatic palettes of primary colors, objectivity and anonymity of style.

Use of the fewest and barest essentials or elements, as in the arts, literature or design.

In Music, a school or mode of contemporary music marked by extreme simplification of rhythms, patterns and harmonies, prolonged chordal or melodic repetitions and often a trance like effect.

Barnett Newman 1905-1970 | Voice of Fire, 1967

Minimalism Art leading figures: Donald Judd 1928-1994, Frank Stella 1936, Robert Morris 1931 and Carl Andre 1935 - created objects which often blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and were characterized by unitary, geometric forms and industrial materials.

Emphasising cool anonymity over the hot expressivism of the previous generation of painters, the Minimalists attempted to avoid metaphorical associations, symbolism and suggestions of spiritual transcendence.

Minimal Hard-edge painting is characterized by large, simplified, usually geometric forms on an overall flat surface; precise, razor-sharp contours; and broad areas of bright, unmodulated colour that have been stained into unprimed canvas.

It differs from other types of geometric abstraction in that it rejects both lyrical and mathematical composition because, even in this simplified field, they are a means of personal expression for the artist.

Minimal hard-edge painting is the anonymous construction of a simple object.

Minimal sculpture is composed of extremely simple, monumental geometric forms made of fibreglass, plastic, sheet metal, or aluminum, either left raw or solidly painted with bright industrial colours.

Like the painters, minimalist sculptors attempted to make their works totally objective, unexpressive, and non-referential.

Donald Judd 1928-1994

Carl Andre, 1935

Frank Stella, 1936

Piet Mondrian 1872-1944

Robert Morris, 1931

Robert Morris, 1931