What is Minimal Art?

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The ongoing tendency toward abstraction in the 20th century culminated in new heights after the Second World War in the United States of America. New types of works—a movement in post-war art—were described as ABC-art, Cool Art, Rejective Art, or Primary Structures. Today we know these works as Minimal Art, courtesy of art philosopher Richard Wollheim’s eponymous essay from 1965.[1]

But what is Minimal Art, and how can one define this groundbreaking art movement? What are the main characteristics? What is the difference between Minimal Art and Minimalism? And who are the most important minimal artists throughout art history? Let’s discuss these frequently asked questions one by one in this complete overview article on Minimal Art, presenting the world’s 25 most important conceptual artists.

What is Minimal Art? — Definition, Characteristics & History

Minimal Art is a historical art movement that originated in the 1950s and 1960s in the United States of America, marked by extreme abstraction, geometric shapes, and radical simplicity, pioneered by artists such as Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Morris.

Minimal Art is bound by the corresponding formal aspects of various artists. As a result, the main characteristics of Minimal Art include a reduced vocabulary of shapes, the use of seriality, non-relational composition techniques, and the use of new industrial materials and industrial processes. When it comes to Minimalism and Minimal Art, the key difference between both consists of Minimal Art being exclusively bound to visual art. In contrast, Minimalism is associated with specific dance, music, or literature tendencies.[2]

The medium of painting was a crucial element in the evolution of Minimal Art. Abstract paintings became objects, and so did abstraction moving from painting to sculpture to installation. As a result, many painters associated with Minimal Art are also linked with Abstract Expressionism, Post-Painterly Abstraction, or Hard-Edge painting. As soon as we entered the realms of Minimal Art, the tendency had become an art movement on its own.[3]

Top 25 Most Important Minimal Artists

For this article, we have shortlisted the twenty-five most important minimal artists. Our first five artists—Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Morris—are arguably the most important Minimal artists, followed by twenty fellow Minimal artists in alphabetical order.

1. Carl Andre

Carl Andre, born in 1935 in Quincy, Massachusetts, the United States of America, is one of the most important Minimal artists living and working in New York City. He pioneered sculpture in Minimal Art with his characteristic copper tiles, bricks, or stones lying on the gallery floors. Geometric shapes and industrial materials are critical characteristics of Andre’s Minimal oeuvre. He installs his sculptures or installations in situ, with the wear on top of the materials functioning as an esthetic but natural patina.

He describes his works as atheïst due to the absence of spiritual or intellectual qualities. He describes his works as materialist, as they only exist off their own matter and do not take on being something else than their matter. Finally, he describes his works as communist, as they are accessible to everybody. However, this accessibility was not straightforward, as it took several years for public opinion to get used to this radical art form. John Weber, former director of Dwan Gallery, describes how people did not dare to enter the gallery when Carl Andre’s works were on display, as they could only enter the gallery by walking on top of them.

“Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary” – Carl Andre

2. Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin was born in 1933 in New York City and passed away in 1996 in Riverhead, New York, the United States of America. Flavin is best known for working with fluorescent light beams and pioneering Minimal Art with his radical and innovative sculptures. Flavin started as a painter in the late 1950s with abstract paintings. With the turn of the new decade, he started experimenting with fluorescent light, resulting in his breakthrough in 1963, putting a single fluorescent light diagonally on his studio wall. These industrial readymades became the only material or medium for his internationally lauded artistic oeuvre.

“Realizing this, I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (an electric light) at crucial junctures in the room’s composition.” – Dan Flavin.

3. Donald Judd

Donald Judd was born in 1928 in Excelsior Springs and passed away in New York City, the United States of America, in 1994. For many, Donald Judd is the ultimate minimal artist. A statement that is very difficult to argue. Like Dan Flavin, Donald Judd started as a painter in the 1940s, painting traditionally before experimenting radically with various reliefs, combining painting with sculpture. In 1963, Judd stopped painting, worked with and in spaces, and started exhibiting in the New York art scene, baffling art critics and enthusiasts by the dozen with the renowned simplicity and strictness of his objects.

“It isn’t necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality whole, is what is interesting. The main things are alone and are more intense, clear, and powerful.” – Donald Judd.

4. Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt was born in 1928 in Connecticut, the United States of America, and passed away at age 78 in New York City. LeWitt was one of the leading figures of Minimal Art and is best known for his wall drawings or geometric sculptures, which he referred to as structures. LeWitt creates multiple permutations of his structures, exploring a geometrical and mathematical system with industrial materials such as aluminum, metal, or concrete. Being a key figure in the evolution of Conceptual Art, LeWitt insisted on the idea, scheme, and planning of these structures as the artwork itself. In doing so, the actual execution of the sculptures – the objects themselves – is inferior in relation to the concept of the structure.

“A blind man can make art if what is in his mind can be passed to another mind in some tangible form.” — Sol LeWitt.

5. Robert Morris

Robert Morris was born in Kansas City in 1931 and passed away in 2018 in Kingston, New York, the United States of America. Morris is best known for pioneering Minimal Art, Process Art, and Land Art and is also associated with Fluxus and Performance Art. Contrary to his Minimal colleagues, Morris does not confine his work to one specific direction of thinking. In doing so, the pioneer took on multiple questions establishing multiple theories for art movements.

“Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience.” – Robert Morris.

6. Stephan Antonakos

Stephan Antonakos, born in 1926 in Agios Nikolaos, Greece, passed away in 2013, is a renowned Minimal artist best known for his bright and colored light installations. Antonakos started his artistic career as a self-taught artist in the 40s. After experimenting with collage and sculpture, Antonakos was struck by fluorescent lights, which would soon be his primary medium resulting in breakthrough exhibitions in the New York art scene in the 1960s.

7. Jo Baer

Jo Baer, born in 1929 in Seattle, Washington, the United States of America, is an internationally lauded Minimal artist living and working in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Like many artists from her generation, Jo Baer had a solid academic background as a painter and a Biologist with a very strong knowledge of perceptual physiology, which is a crucial element in her work. As a result, a recurring motive in Baer’s oeuvre – especially in the 1960s – consists of a dark painted frame with a blanc or white interior.

“A painting is an object which has an emphatic frontal surface. On such a surface, I paint a black band which does not recede, a color band which does not obtrude, a white square or rectangle which does not move back or forth, or up or down; there is also a painted white exterior frame band which is edged round the edge to the black. Every part is painted and contiguous to its neighbor; no part is above or below any other part. There is no hierarchy. There is no ambiguity. There is no illusion. There is no space or interval (time).” – Jo Baer

8. Larry Bell

Born in 1939 in Chicago, the United States of America, Larry Bell is a Minimal artist best known for his works, according to the artist, “about nothing”. They simply illustrate a void or a lack of subject matter in a very literal way. In 1962, Bell developed a technique to create a thin layer on the glass to create a transparent and subtle color on glass surfaces. As a result, he made a series of works based upon the cubic form combining Op Art and Minimal Art, resulting in several breakthrough shows in New York.

9. Ronald Bladen

Ronald Bladen was born in 1918 in Vancouver, Canada, and passed away in New York City in 1988. Bladen is best known for his Minimal sculptures, often monumental in size. Bladen is occupied with the spatial context and how a sculpture can interfere with this context. In doing so, Bladen interacts with the viewer as it is often necessary to walk around the sculpture multiple times to understand the expressive nature of the object.

10. Mary Corse

Mary Corse, born in 1945 in Berkeley, the United States of America, is a minimal artist from a different generation than our previously discussed artists. Corse is best known for her very controlled formal approach using geometrical shapes in the tradition of Minimalism. She is lauded for her ongoing exploration of the surface and painting. In doing so, she aims to create a dynamic according to the surroundings of the painting and the spatial awareness of the viewer.

11. Walter De Maria

Walter De Maria was born in 1935 in Albany, the United States of America, and passed away in 2013 in New York City. De Maria defies categorization as his oeuvre encompasses not only Minimal Art but also Conceptual Art and Land Art. He was trained as a painter but is primarily known for his Minimalist sculptures.

12. Robert Grosvenor

Robert Grosvenor was born in 1937 in New York City, the United States of America. Grosvenor’s early work from the 60s consisted of large triplex shapes mounted on the ceiling or the wall at a certain height. In doing so, Grosvenor shows his interest and ongoing examination of gravity, dynamics, and the spatial dialogue between the artwork, the space, and the viewer. Later on, his work would often consist of monumental installations or sculptures which the audience must navigate. He insists his works need to be approached as ideas that take place or operate, between the floor and the ceiling of the space.

13. Carmen Herrera

Carmen Herrera was born in 1915 in Havana, Cuba, and still, up to today, lives and works at a 100+ age between Paris, France, and New York City, the United States of America. (Edit: Carmen Herrera passed away on February 12, 2022, in New York City) Herrera is best known for her wall objects hovering between sculpture and painting. These objects are called ‘structures’ or rather ‘Estructuras’. She is associated with Minimal Art and Op Art or Hard-Edge painting. She takes on color and minimal shapes and brings them together in serene wall objects. Only in the first decade of the 21st century, Herrera received international recognition resulting in exhibitions at major institutions, including a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in 2016.

14. Eva Hesse

Eva Hesse was born in 1936 in Hamburg, Germany, and passed away in 1970 in New York City, the United States of America. Hesse emigrated from Germany in 1939 to New York due to the upcoming Second World War. In New York, she started painting in 1954 at the Cooper Union School of Art, resulting in Abstract Expressionist paintings throughout the 1950s. Between 1965 and her sadly early death in 1970, Hesse produced an oeuvre of 70 artworks reinterpreting Pop-Art and Minimal Art. She often created serial artworks, grid motives, and cubes and frequently used industrial materials and processes.

15. Gary Kuehn

Gary Kuehn, born in 1939 in Plainfield, the United States of America, is a contemporary artist living and working in New York City. During the 1960s, Kuehn studied together with Roy Lichtenstein and George Sagal. His works result from his psychology, desires, and personal experiences. The artworks disrupt the power of the pure form, resulting in often surrealistic or expressionistic shapes. In doing so, he constructs simple geometrical shapes before breaking or disjointing them.

16. Robert Mangold

Robert Mangold, born in 1937 in New York, the United States of America, is a Minimal artist primarily occupied with painting. Mangold finished his studies at the art academy of Yale University in 1963. In an era in which painting was proclaimed dead, Mangold remained very passionate about painting and saw new possibilities within the medium. He approaches a painting as a combination of surface and form instead of a pure object. Doing so, he continued to work on a flat surface. For Mangold, this two-dimensionality was not a flaw but the absolute strength of painting.

17. Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin, born in 1912 in Maklin, Canada, passed away in 2004 in Toas, the United States of America, is one of the most influential artists of the previous century. Martin is best known for her Minimal approach to abstract painting, implementing geometrical structures such as the grid, lines, blocks, or muted color into her oeuvre. As a result, Martin is strongly associated with Abstract Expressionism and is one of her time’s undisputed most important painters.

18. John McCracken

John McCracken was born in 1934 in Berkeley and passed away in 2011 in New York City, the United States of America. McCracken is best known for his sculptures called ‘Planks’ of large plates balancing against the gallery, studio, or museum wall. These colored surfaces, often large in scale, are very pure and esthetic sculptures following the important principles of Minimal Art, using industrial materials such as triplex or fiberglass, staying true to the pure geometrical forms of these materials.

19. Charlotte Posenenske

Charlotte Posenenske – born in 1930 in Wiesbaden, Germany, passed away in 1985 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany – is a key figure when it comes to Conceptual Art and Minimal Art. Her oeuvre spans a short era of time from 1959 until 1968, leaving a mark on contemporary art history in just a decade. Posenenske’s work can be reproduced as many times as possible according to an industrial process. The primary model, the idea or concept, is the artwork itself which can be reproduced infinitely. In doing so, Charlotte Posenenske rejects the commercial nature of the art market, selling her works at prices of merely material costs.

20. Robert Ryman

Robert Ryman – born in 1930 in Nashville, and passed away in 2019 in New York City, the United States of America – is convinced it’s not about what you paint but how you paint. In doing so, the manner of painting is crucial and decisive for the result. Ryman is best known for his white paintings and paintings of horizontal bands.

21. Fred Sandback

Fred Sandback – born in 1943 in Bronxville, New York, passed away in 2003 in New York City, the United States of America – is best known for his installations or sculptures using colored thread or wire to create geometrical figures in space. Spaces could be demarcated flat on the floor or from the floor to the ceiling, creating three-dimensional shapes such as triangles or squares. In doing so, Sandback illustrates how small interventions can be of significant influence. Most of his artworks were necessarily built in situ due to the varying dimensions of the space, resulting in unique works for every site.

22. Richard Serra

Born in 1938 in San Francisco, the United States of America, and passed away in 2024 in New York, Richard Serra is one of the most iconic Minimal artists known for his monumental sculptures. As a true minimal artist, Serra uses industrial materials such as steel to create monumental surfaces, often bending or curving in space. Serra invites the viewer to enter the sculpture and become aware of how the sculpture influences our awareness of space and scale.

23. Tony Smith

Tony Smith, born in 1912 in South Orange, New Jersey, the United States of America, passed away in New York City in 1980. Smith insists art is not the product of conscious decisions but rather a result of subconscious flashes of ideas. These images or ideas hide in his dreams, and it is the task of the artist to identify and capture them, followed by producing them as objects in reality.

24. Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson – born in 1938 in Passaic, New Jersey, and passed away in 1973 in Amarillo, Texas, the United States of America – is arguably one of the most productive artists of his generation. By doing so, Smithson is also known as a significant author writing thousands of pages on his contemporaries. Smithson is strongly associated with Land Art due to his iconic artwork Spiral Jetty. However, he is also an essential figure in Conceptual Art and Minimal Art due to his oeuvre of installations and sculptures.

25. Anne Truitt

We conclude our list with Anne Truitt. Truitt – born in 1921 in Baltimore, the United States of America, passed away in 2004 in Washington – is a minimal artist who is also associated with Color Field Painting. Truitt is best known for her sculptures of large planes of color. Her main aim was to create color in three dimensions. The objective is to free the color of its surface as if the surface dissolves and becomes pure color in space.

The Best Books on Minimal Art

For further reading on Minimal Art, we highly recommend the following publications:

• Frances Colpitt, Minimal Art: The Critical Perspective. University of Washington Press: 1993.
• Gregory Battcock and Anne M. Wagner, Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology. University of California Press: 1995.
• Daniel Marzona, Minimal Art. TASCHEN: 2005.

Notes:

[1] Daniel Maradona, Minimal Art. Köln: Taschen, 2005.
[2] Tate, Minimalism at https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/minimalism consulted 23/10/2021.
[3] Ibid.

Last Updated on October 18, 2024