In 1962, Smith was commissioned to create a sculpture for the Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of the Two Worlds) in Spoleto, Italy. Given full use of five shuttered factory buildings in the town of Voltri, near Genoa, and permission to incorporate into his sculpture any tools, machines, or manufactured steel elements he found abandoned there, Smith produced twenty-seven works at a rate of nearly one per day. Upon returning to the United States, he had his remaining works-in-progress and additional parts sent from Italy to Bolton Landing, New York, where he completed the “Voltri-Bolton/Voltron/V. B.” series. In Voltron XII, Smith combined geometric forms and industrial parts to create a three-dimensional collage – a calligraphic construction of great grace and purity, resembling a human figure in the most abstract terms.

Adina Kamien

Turf – the upper stratum of soil, an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter – is a rich, dark, and dense substance. Often found in forested and moorland areas, it burns pungently in hearths, warming the home. Peatland ecosystems cover much of the planet, releasing carbon dioxide to maintain nature’s equilibrium. Made for an enclosed space, Turf Ring’s neatly shaped turf bricks form a circle imported from far-off places. As a child, Long used to visit his grandparents in Devon, and throughout his life frequented the nearby Dartmoor Forest, which became a favorite place for uninterrupted walks, as well as the source and site for many of his natural circular installations. Turf also carries a mythological dimension in British culture: According to popular belief, little fairies called pixies are particularly concentrated in the high moorland around Devon. Pixies chase stolen horses through the fields, creating circles in the process. Stepping into such a circle leads one into the enchanted world of pixieland.

Maria Pudalova

Two features characterize Ryman’s work: a square format and an exclusively white palette. Although he used only white paint, Ryman did not consider his paintings to be monochromatic; for him, the neutrality of white emphasized the varied texture of the painted surface. Countless nuances of whiteness emerge through the combination of a variety of supports (canvas, paper, wood, metal, Plexiglas) with a range of media (acrylic, oil, enamel). In some cases, exposed hanging devices reveal part of the process involved in realizing a work and presenting it to the public.

With Range, the artist draws our attention to the edges of the fiberglass panel by painting its two sides and lower left corner in oil and enamel in varied shades of white. He also enriched the composition and delicate color relationships with an aluminum strip above and below, exposing the fasteners and bolts. By highlighting the brackets that attach the artwork to the wall – a technical detail ordinarily hidden from view – Ryman raised awareness to the creative process as an essential part of viewing an artwork. The question for him was not what to paint, but how to paint. In Ryman’s view, painting is not about formulas or descriptions: it is about experience and enlightenment.

Adina Kamien

To Mangold, geometry is a tool – a language – but not a theme. Employing geometric elements, he creates neutral, anonymous, self-referential forms. The oval in Distorted Ellipse within a Rectangle may seem, at first glance, a perfect example of its type. On closer scrutiny, however, it becomes obvious that it is asymmetrical and warped – “distorted,” as the work’s title indicates. Mangold drew the oval by hand, thus forsaking pure geometry. It becomes difficult to determine whether the paradigm or the painter is at fault for the deviation from the ideal form and whether the defect is, in fact, perceptual, conceptual, or technical.

Lynn Cooke

Noland produced several series in which he explored the effects of color, and particularly the relationship between the painted sections of the canvas and the bare, untouched parts. Applying the paint with a brush and roller, he let the color become part of the weave of the canvas rather than superimposing it on the flat surface. In 1963, Noland began a series focused on the motif of the chevron, or “V” shape, characterized by triangular bands of color pointed toward the bottom of the picture plane. The execution of the works required great precision, and Noland referred to them as “one-shot” paintings.

Taking its title from the realm of carpentry, Chamfer focuses on right-angled edges or corners to create softer transitional edges. At first glance, the painting gives the impression of geometric precision and purity of hue: three colored triangles in orange, red, and blue center on the axis of the canvas in symmetry. The tip of the blue triangle is just barely cut by the bottom edge of the canvas. The natural canvas is apparent between the triangles, above them, and on their sides, producing tension between painted and raw surfaces. The stained triangles seem to be precisely articulated and uniform in saturation, an accuracy that might indicate the use of a ruler to trace the lines. The rhythmic repetition of the shape, the simple colors, and the harmony between them speak to the principles of Minimalism, a movement that sought to convey the essence of form. However, upon closer inspection, the three lines forming the triangles can be seen to be slightly uneven and the colors, which from a distance seem uniform and solid, to modulate irregularly from top to bottom. They breathe and are not locked in laconic, geometric indifference.

Maria Pudalova

In Earth and Air, Gross depicts the horizon that directs the viewer’s gaze to the side and the longitude line that lifts it up to the “sky” and draws it down to the “earth.” Looking at the painting up close we can see that the white layer of paint that forms the two lines was applied on a canvas that was completely covered in ocher. Thus Gross presents the hierarchy of the gaze, with the earth down below and the air up above.

Ido Targano

White and Ochre consists of two canvases which, together, represent the wholeness of nature. On the right canvas, the horizon is depicted as an ocher line painted with great precision between white surfaces, themselves painted over a darker shade. On the left canvas, the horizon line continues, meeting at two-thirds of the way with a lighter ocher-toned surface. The brushstrokes along the line and especially at the meeting point are clearly visible. The hot sun seems to brighten the desolate land or water, and Gross’s loneliness in the abstract, serene, contained landscape is almost palpable. In this large-scale painting, the artist manages to express feelings and emotions he experienced in the landscape of his childhood and to capture fleeting moments in nature.

Ido Targano

Wedding the handmade and the mechanical, Coming to Shore is a two-part conversation between a painted triangle (varied shades of light blue with a yellow tip) and square metal plates (one gold and twenty blue, with varying autographic marks) that complete a triangle inverse to the painted one. After noticing the metal signs in New York’s subways, Bartlett began using the plate pieces that established her reputation during the heyday of Minimalism and Conceptual art, in the mid- to late 1960s. Durable, portable, and flexible, the steel plates served as “hard paper that could be cleaned and reworked,” she said, adding: “I wanted a unit that could go around corners on the wall [and] stack for shipping.” With deburred edges, baked enamel surface, and holes in each of its four corners, the one-foot square, cold-rolled steel plates were made by Gerson Feiner in a metal fabrication shop in New Jersey. The grid that is formed mimics the graph paper utilized by Bartlett and other artists in the 1960s and 1970s, and recalls the work of Bartlett’s friend the Minimalist artist Sol LeWitt. A methodical yet dynamic work, Coming to Shore merges the organic and inorganic, the conceptual and the perceptual.

Adina Kamien

Martin’s intention in her paintings was to produce the same effect brought about by listening to music or staring out at the ocean or into a vast field. The eye first perceives the language of the  picture and the rules according to which it was constructed. Then it is free to examine the details, such as the pencil lines that seem integral to the painted background and yet were clearly drawn on top of it, by hand, with slight overlaps and miniscule fluctuations that reveal human intervention. Martin strove to attain a language of pure form and unity, totally unworldly, eliminating everything superfluous and inessential. In this way, she sought to create a feeling of peace, harmony, and order. Each of her works, defined by its own unique pattern of interwoven lines, exhibits a subtle yet undeniable complexity.

Suzanne Landau