Fifteen years after rising to global prominence, the bold and brash bravado of Abstract Expressionism was losing its edge. For all its rage against the mechanization of modern life, it had become synonymous with excess and ego. By the early 1960s, a new cool had emerged, one known as Minimalism, which took Mies van der Rohe’s maxim, “Less is more,” to its logical conclusion.
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Forsaking the dramatics of Abstract Expressionism, which constantly asserted the artist and their message at the very center of the work, Minimalists sought a new kind of anonymity that favored materiality over all. Preconceived notions of art were abandoned. Narratives, metaphors, and symbols were vanished. The hand of the artist vanished. In its place all that remained was the space where the object and the audience could become entangled and engaged. Perception and experience reigned supreme, as the shape, color, line, and form of the object were reduced to their purest state.
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Yet Minimalism was no less a male dominated space than Abstract Expressionism had been. The movement was realized in 1966 with the landmark “Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors” exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York. Of the 42 artists featured in the show, only three women were featured, among them Anne Truitt and Judy Gerowitz (later known as Judy Chicago).
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Yet women were an integral part of Minimalism as it rose to prominence during the late 1960s and ‘70s — the same era that gave birth to the Women’s Movement. Despite not receiving recognition or remuneration comparable to their male peers, artists including Carmen Hererra, Agnes Martin, Beverly Pepper, Anne Truitt, Mary Corse, Eva Hesse, Vija Celmins, Noemi Escandell, Jo Baer, and Nasreen Mohamedi were committed to pursuing their destinies as leading proponents of the movement.
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