Frank Stella

Frank Stella has been known for helping to launch the Minimalism movement. First impacting the art world by endowing non-representational artwork with new significance, Stella's instantly acclaimed 1958 Minimalist paintings contrasted Abstract Expressionism's emotional canvases. He has constantly reinvented himself, creating increasingly textured, dynamic and vivid work.

Although he began creating art when Abstract Expressionism's gestural brushstrokes were the dominant technique, Stella painted flat, smooth works that led the art world in another direction, towards Minimalism. Stella was an early advocate of making non-representational paintings, rather than artwork that alluded to underlying meanings, emotions or narratives. Like Ellsworth Kelly, he wanted his audience to appreciate color, shape and structure alone. Stella changed the very notion of a painting by declaring his flat canvases, structured reliefs, metal protrusions and freestanding sculptures all to be paintings.

Some of Stella's work include:

Frank Stella has been a pioneer in the art world for four decades, beginning with his early fascination with Minimalism to his current love of sculptural line space and movement.

Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly has been a widely influential force in the post-war art world. He first rose to critical acclaim in the 1950s with his bright, multi-paneled and largely monochromatic canvases. Maintaining a persistent focus on the dynamic relationships between shape, form and color.

Kelly was one of the first artists to create irregularly shaped canvases. His rectangular panels gave way to unconventionally shaped canvases, painted in bold, monochromatic colors. At the same time, he was also making sculptures comprised of flat shapes and bright color. His sculptures were largely two-dimensional and shallow, more so than his paintings. In his works, Kelly placed primary importance in form and shape.

One very famous work of Ellsworth Kelly is the "Red, Yellow, Blue", pictured below:

His monochrome canvas redefine the beauty and drama of the single-color process. Color is the actor on this stage, the figure that transfixes the audience's gaze. These colors and shapes become part of the subconscious of the viewer, who feels the reds, blues, yellows as emotions.

Quoting Ellsworth Kelly, he said, "The form of my painting is content. My work is made of single or multiple panels: rectangle, curved or square. I am less interested in marks on the panels than the "presence" of the panels themselves. In 'Red, Yellow, Blue', the square panels present color. It was made to exist forever in the present; it is an idea and can be repeated anytime in the future."

Some of Ellsworth Kelly's work:

His work further challenged viewer's conceptions of space. Ellsworth Kelly vitally influenced the development of Minimalism, Hard-edge Painting, Color Field, and Pop Art.

Minimalism Art Movement

Minimalism is considered an abstract art that covers various forms of art and design. It is a term used to describe paintings and sculpture that thrive on simplicity in both content and form, and seek to remove any sign of personal expressivity. The aim of Minimalism is to allow the viewer to experience the work more intensely without the distractions of composition, theme, and so on.

Minimal Art emerged as a movement in the 1950s and continued through the 60's and 70's. However, there are examples of the Minimalist theory being exercised as early as the 18th century when Goethe constructed an "Altar of Good Fortune", made simply of a stone sphere and cube.

Goethe's "Altar of Good Fortune", created in 1777

(taken from here)

But the 20th century sees the movement come into its own. From the 1920s, artists such as Malevich and Duchamp produced works in the Minimalist vein but the movement is known chiefly by its American exponents such as Dan Flavin, Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella.

The theory of Minimalism is that without the diverting presence of "composition", and by the use of plain, often industrial materials, arranged in geometrical or highly simplified configurations, we may experience all the more strongly the pure qualities of color, form, space and materials.

It was the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who adopted the motto, "Less is More", which is the actual aim of the movement. This motto described the style of design where numerous essential components of a structure is arranged in such as way as to create the impression of extreme simplicity. With this concept, structures designed by van der Rohe makes use of simple yet elegant designs. The structure's beauty is determined by outlining the basic geometric shapes, the use of striking color combinations, light effects, and clean and fine finishes.

Minimal Art is related to a number of other movements such as Conceptual Art in the way the finished work exists merely to convey a theory, Pop Art in their shared fascination with the impersonal, and Land Art in the construction of simple shapes. Minimal Art proved highly successful and has been enormously influential on the development of art in the 20th century.

Conceptual Art: On Kawara

Pop Art: Madonna

Land Art