'Carmen Herrera is an American-Cuban Minimalist artist working in both sculpture and painting. However, she is only recently being recognized for her groundbreaking creations. She is an abstract painter, sculptor, and minimalist and has been making art for over 70 years. The Art of Handwriting provides a fresh way to think about artists and their creative work.'Īt 105 years old today, Carmen Herrera continues to influence minimalist artists. Each letter is accompanied by an archival image of the artist or an artwork that is described in relation to the handwriting. Brief essays from curators and art historians explore what can be learned from the handwriting of celebrated artists such as Georgia O'Keefe, Isamu Noguchi, Willem de Kooning, Thomas Eakins, Sister Corita Kent, and many others. This correspondence from the collections of the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art show that an artist might put pen to paper just as he or she would craft a line in a drawing. The Art of Handwriting builds on this interest, revealing how the simple act of writing a letter can be an artistic act. Associations such as the International Association of Master Penmen and The Society for Italic Handwriting keep the traditions of calligraphy and penmanship alive, script typefaces continue to be bestsellers, and hand-drawn display type and packaging of all sorts are having their own renaissance. As Flavin's installations grew more complex, so too did the spaces built expressly for the purpose of exhibiting them.' - ArtsyĮven in our age of emails, texts, and tweets, there is a growing fascination with the simple act of putting pen to paper. A number of the sculptures features tubes traversing corners or doorways, or at a right angle to the wall, further engaging the architecture of a room. Flavin's wall-and-floor-mounted, site-specific fixtures, composed of intersecting and parallel lines of light conventional colors, flood spaces with their glow. 'Utilizing fluorescent light tubing available on the commercial market, Dan Flavin created light installations (or 'situations' as he preferred to call them) that became icons of Minimalism. His illuminated sculptures offer a rigorous formal and conceptual investigation of space and light, wherein the artist arranged commercial fluorescent blulbs into differing geometric compositions.' - Artnet 'Dan Flavin was an American artist and pioneer of Minimalism, best known for his seminal installations of light fixtures. Here is a brief look at some American minimalists! We encourage you to check out the library's books on each artist & topic!

It can also be seen as representing such qualities as truth, order, simplicity, and harmony.' - Tate Both movements challenged the existing structures for making, disseminating and viewing art and argued that the importance given to the art object is misplaced and leads to a rigid and elitist art world which only the privileged few can afford to enjoy.Īesthetically, minimalist art offers a highly purified form of beauty. The development of minimalism is linked to that of conceptual art (which also flourished in the 1960s and 1970s). The medium, (or material) from which it is made, and the form of the work is the reality.

With minimalism, no attempt is made to represent an outside reality, the artist wants the viewer to respond only to what is in front of them. 'Minimalism or minimalist art can be seen as extending the abstract idea that art should have its own reality and not be an imitation of some other thing.

African american minimalist artists