The art movement that emerged in the 1960s with simplicity and industrial materials is Minimalism. In visual art, it reduced forms, decoration, metaphor, and personal gesture so that an artwork could emphasize its physical presence and the viewer’s experience of it.
Minimalism emerged most strongly in New York during the early 1960s, partly as a reaction against the emotional intensity and painterly surface of Abstract Expressionism. Artists explored geometric shapes, repetition, serial arrangements, neutral surfaces, and literal materials rather than illusionistic images.
Sculptors such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, and Robert Morris used materials including metal, aluminum, concrete, fiberglass, plastic, and fluorescent light. Industrial fabrication was important: some artists designed objects that were then produced by specialist manufacturers, challenging the traditional idea that an artwork had to show the artist’s hand.
The label is broader than a single uniform style. Minimalism also drew on Bauhaus, De Stijl, Constructivism, and earlier geometric abstraction. Artists and critics debated the term, and some artists disliked it because “minimal” could sound as though their work was merely simple or empty.