Minimal art developed in the USA in the 1960s as a tendency towards abstraction in modern art.
The artists of this movement sought to return form to its primary structures. The term “minimalism” above all relates to sculpture. Minimal objects were characterised by clear geometric structures, often in repeating series; the use of industrially manufactured products (e.g. tiles, neon tubes, steel frames), and a tendency towards depersonalisation and objectivity. The artists eschewed any decorative additions and reduced the formal language to simple basic structures. Their objects represented their own structures, which drew the observer’s attention to aspects of spatial function. In product design and architecture, this style became popular from the 1980s under the guiding principle that “less is more”. Buildings and objects were pared down to their essential elements, reduced to simple, clear, and predominantly geometrical basic structures.
