2024-04-25
Minimalism refers to works of art that have a greatly simplified, streamlined form. Minimal art typically involves simple solids and geometric shapes, uniform surfaces, and play with scale. The minimalist trend reduces art to a minimum, bringing out its essence, without the subjectivity of its authors.
The term minimal art originated in the 1960s in New York City, when the post-war Western art world rebelled against Abstract Expressionism and Modernism.
Minimalists promoted neo-constructivist geometrization and anti-illusionism, which in opposition to, for instance, action painting constitute a much more structured painterly vision, sometimes even subordinated to specific, mathematical principles. Minimalism is dominated by logic and objectivity, leaving no space for individual feelings of artists.
Minimal art is characterized by restraint in artistic expression. Classic geometric shapes, basic colors, and commonly available materials are used. The effect of the resulting work is aesthetically elegant, universal, distanced from the phenomena of the real world. Additionally, minimalist works do not promote artists, the works are often completely unsigned, anonymous – a minimalist work "speaks for itself".
The most famous foreign minimalist artists are Donald Judd, who is considered one of the leading representatives of this trend, Dan Flavin, known mainly for his fluorescent installations, and Carmen Herrera, who created colorful, geometric abstractions.
In Poland minimalist art is associated among others with Mirosław Bałka – one of the most acclaimed contemporary sculptors and Zbigniew Gostomski, the artist from the canon of Polish avant-garde art of the 1960s and 1970s.