W ith an emphasis on a cool and detached approach to art making, Minimalism emerged in the 1960s as a rejection of the dramatic gestures of Abstract Expressionism so dominant in the previous decade. Artists working in the Minima🅺list mode favoured unencumbered materiality and precision over emotion and overt action.
Works by 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Robert Ryman, 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Agnes Martin and 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Ellsworth Kelly – three pioneers of the aesthetic – will appear in Sotheby’s upcoming 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Contemporary Art Evening auction, illuminating the varied nuances𝄹 of 🐲minimal painting.
ROBERT RYMAN, MERIDIAN, 1971. ESTIMATE $4,000,000—6,000,000.
Robert Ryman is known for his consistent use of two essential materials: a square-format canvas and white paint. Executed in the early 1970s at the height of artist’s creative practice, Meridian is distinguished in Ryman’s oeuvre by its uniquely poetic title. Much like ascending latitudes on a globe, subtle horizontal bands line surface, created by brushstrokes that Ryman methodically ends just before the edge of the canvas, framing the i🥃ncandescent expanse of white pigment within a border of raw canvas. The work is a testament to its materiality – as the m꧟editative motions of the artist’s hand across the canvas articulate the means by which it was created.
AGNES MARTIN, UNTITLED #12, 1996. ESTIMATE $3,000,000–4,000,000.
For Agnes Martin, the formal constant was the grid, a methodical structure she began using in the 1970s, after several years of not making art. In 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Untitled #12, imperceptibly thin lines of graphite demarcate six equal and minimally painted horizontal bands of incandescent powder blues and pale yellow. From a distance, the subtle tones only faintly assert their singularity, and while the consistent pattern is evident closer up, the compositions have a deeper conceptual, even spiritual aspect. “My paintings are not about what is seen,” Martin said. “They are 🀅about what is known forever in the mind.”
AGNES MARTIN, UNTITLED #5, 1981. ESTIMATE $6,000,000–8,000,000.
In 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Untitled #5, slender bands of powder blue, hazy pink and shimmering ivory alternate in an immersive and variegated rhythm of lines. Within an oeuvre defined by precise and exacting fidelity to Minimalism, 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Untitled #5 asserts the implication of chance— the diaphanous bands of colour lack a defined pattern — making 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Untitled #5 truly exceptional in the artist’s 𝓀later practice.
ELLSWORTH KELLY, PURPLE PANEL WITH BLUE CURVE, 1989. ESTIMATE $3,000,000–5,000,000.
With 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Purple Panel with Blue Curve, Ellsworth Kelly channels Minimalism’s exacting aesthetic and precise paint application while alluding to the colour-driven work of Paul Signac and Henri Matisse. Comprising two distinct panels – one a rectangle, the other an elegant curve – Kelly achieves sublime compositional equilibrium. Conflating the categories of painting, sculpture and relief, in 168开奖官方开奖网站查询:Purple Panel with Blue Curve, Kelly achieved a powerful un🐼ified visual vocabulary, in which colour occ♔upies space.
