Minimalism

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Minimalism
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What is Minimalism?

• Minimalism is an art movement in sculpture and
  painting that began in the 1950s and emphasized
  extreme simplification of form and color.
• It is abstract painting and sculpture.
• Use of basic shapes and monochromatic palettes of
  primary colors, objectivity, and anonymity of
  style.

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Visuals
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Frank Stella

• American Minimalist Painter
• He is a significant figure in minimalism and
  post-painterly abstraction. He became influenced
  by the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock
  and Franz Kline.
• Rather than the picture as a representation of
  something, be it something in the physical world,
  or something in the artist's emotional world.

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Agnes Martin

• Canadian Minimalist Painter
• The bulk of her work is composed of square grids.
  While minimalist in form, these paintings were
  quite different in spirit from those of her
  minimalist counterparts she shied away from
  intellectualism, favoring the personal and
  spiritual. Many of her grids represent Taoist
  reflections. Because of her work's added
  spiritual dimension, she preferred to be
  classified as an abstract expressionist.
• She worked only in black, white, and brown before
  moving to New Mexico. During this time, she
  introduced light pastel washes to her grids,
  colors that shimmered in the changing light.

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Donald Judd

• American Minimalist Sculptor 1928-1994
• Donald Judd was born June 3, 1928, in Excelsior
  Springs, Missouri.
• His work sought autonomy and clarity for the
  constructed object and the space created by it,
  ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic
  presentation without compositional hierarchy.

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Dan Flavin

• American Minimalist Sculptor
• He created sculptural objects and installations
  from commercially available fluorescent light
  fixtures. These works, which he called "icons",
  have been credited with helping to start the
  minimalist movement in 1963.
• Flavin's largest series was called "Monuments to
  V. Tatlin," a group of white works in homage to
  Russian constructivist sculptor Vladimir Tatlin.

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Ellsworth Kelly

• American Minimalist Painter and Sculptor
• Associated with the minimalist school
• He studied at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from
  1941 to 1943 and then after serving in the
  military from 1943 to 1945 he attended the School
  of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1946 to
  1947. He then studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
  in Paris, France through the G.I. Bill.

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Josef Albers

• German Minimalist Painter
• He was a German artist and educator whose work,
  both in Europe and in the United States, formed
  the basis of some of the most influential and
  far-reaching art education programs of the 20th
  century
• He favored a very disciplined approach to
  composition. Most famous of all are the dozens of
  paintings and prints that make up the series
  "Homage to the Square." In this rigorous series,
  begun in 1949, Albers explored chromatic
  interactions with flat colored squares arranged
  concentrically on the canvas.

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Richard Serra

• American Minimalist Sculptor
• He is known for working with large scale
  assemblies of sheet metal
• Usually, the pieces are self supporting and
  emphasize the weight and nature of the materials.
  Rolls of lead are designed to sag over time
• Serra often works on site specific installations,
  frequently on a scale that dwarfs the observer

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Eva Hesse

• German Minimalist Sculptor
• When Hesse was two years old, her family fled
  from Nazi Germany. She was separated from the
  rest of her family because of an illness, because
  Americans at the time generally did not accept
  sick immigrants. They did finally reunite, living
  in Manhattans Washington Heights.
• Her art is said to immortalize all the painful
  struggles of her life including escaping the
  Nazis, her parents' divorce, the suicide of her
  mother at age ten and the death of her father.
  She also always felt she was fighting for
  recognition in a male dominated art world.

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Samuel Beckett

• Irish Minimalist Playwright, Novelist, and Poet
• Beckett's work is stark and deeply pessimistic
  about human nature and the human condition,
  although the pessimism is mitigated by a great
  and often wicked sense of humor. His later work
  explores his themes in an increasingly cryptic
  and attenuated style.
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in
  1969 and elected Saoi of Aosdana in 1984.

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