Minimal

From 8 October 2025, the Bourse de Commerce is hosting a major exhibition dedicated to Minimalist art. Based on the core of the collection assembled over more than fifty years by François Pinault—one of the most substantial in the world in this field—“Minimal” unveils for the first time more than a hundred major works that trace the diversity of this movement since the 1960s, when a whole generation of artists (Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, On Kawara, Agnes Martin, François Morellet, and others) initiated a radical approach to art. “For the first time, I am revealing the most personal aspect of my art collection.

This is the driving force that has accompanied and inspired me for over fifty years,” says François Pinault. Alongside these masterpieces from the Pinault Collection, loans from prestigious collections highlight the historical importance and international resonance of the themes that run through the exhibition. “Minimal” is curated by Jessica Morgan, Director of Dia Art Foundation, who has brought together more than a hundred works created by some fifty artists from Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

The exhibition “Minimal” explores the global shift in art from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, and the influence of this movement, focusing on the radical rethinking of the art object. Characterized by an economy of means, pared-down aesthetics, and a reconsideration of the artwork’s placement in relation to the viewer, artists across Asia, Europe, and North and South America challenged traditional methods of display. This approach invited a more direct, bodily interaction with the work, integrating the viewer and the environment into the artwork itself. While these transformations unfolded in distinct ways across different regions, they shared a common drive to question the relationship between artwork and audience.

For instance, in Japan, the Mono-ha movement focused on bringing mono or “things” together in their natural or industrially fabricated states, highlighting the interdependence of object, space, and viewer. In Brazil, neo-concrete artists embraced a more sensual abstraction, countering the rigid forms of concrete art and fostering an intimate connection with the viewer. Meanwhile, in Europe, movements like Zero in Germany and Arte Povera in Italy pushed the boundaries of sculpture through abstract forms and direct engagement with space, while in the US, Minimalist artists rejected traditional compositional techniques in favour of a pared-down aesthetic and industrial materials. Despite being rooted in local contexts, these developments emerged simultaneously, challenging the US-dominated narrative of Minimalism.

Organised in seven thematic sections—Light, Mono-ha, Balance, Surface, Grid, Monochrome, and Materialism—the exhibition, curated by Jessica Morgan, Director of Dia Art Foundation, highlights these unique yet interconnected global artistic developments drawing on an exceptional group of works from Pinault Collection, with additional loans from Dia Art Foundation and other private and public collections.

“Minimal”. At this point in time, what exactly does this word conjure up? The Oxford Dictionary tells us that it can refer variously to: a quantitative definition (a negligible amount); a type of art featuring simple or geometric forms; unadorned clothing; music characterized by repetition; or a term relating to linguistics. Interestingly, in data available online, we can see the usage of “minimal” over time with the word appearing more frequently in print from the mid-1960s until a crescendo in the late 1980s to early 1990s, before dropping off slightly since.

The high point of the curve invokes memories of Donna Karan and Calvin Klein, the minimal food movement, the architecture of John Pawson, minimal interior design, and the referencing of all of this in movies such as 9½ Weeks (1986), which was famously filmed in part in Donald Judd’s legendary Spring Street loft building. Having now returned to a frequency of usage closer to that of the 1970s, one wonders what this mélange of historical references—from the art-focused Minimalism of the 1960s to ’90s minimal lifestyle branding—means to a new generation. Perhaps it is just one of a plethora of “styles” to be adapted for use and applied as needed, but with no inherent dogma attached. Is “minimal” like “curating”: an art term that has been so completely appropriated by the mainstream that any specificity it once had has now been lost?

This exhibition is not about minimalism, which Google AI tells me is “a philosophy that involves living with fewer possessions and commitments”, not the art movement I am referring to here. Minimal primarily brings together the remarkable and substantial body of work collected by François Pinault that is characterized by reductive forms, abstraction, geometric shapes, and an economy of means. Featuring one of the most remarkable collections of work by Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman, among others, at the centre of the Pinault Collection is a focus on some of the key practitioners of Minimal Art. While the selected works are not limited to a specific time frame, the artists represented here largely established their practices in a period spanning from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s, a moment that witnessed a global revision of the status of the art object achieved through minimal aesthetics and the placement of the artwork in relation to the viewer. Artists in Asia, Europe, and North and South America subjected sculpture and wall-based works to a radical reconsideration: no longer presented on pedestals or against walls at a discrete distance from the viewer, these works entered the space of the visitor, thereby incorporating the environment in which they were placed while calling for a direct correspondence with the individual viewing subject. […]

Underlying the works included here is the desire to position the audience in the same field, thereby calling for a bodily correspondence between art and viewer through scale and proximity. In many parts of the world, this new understanding of three-dimensional form and its relationship to perception led to the development of a dialogue with performance—whether this was realised through the process-based making of the work, choreographic collaboration, or interaction with the artwork. Arguably, this moment also witnessed the increasing use of new media such as photography, film, and video that further developed the relationship to “real time”, as suggested by the theatrical dialogue between subject and object. […]

How, then, to approach an exhibition that is not confined to an ism or art historical category, and which is primarily curated from a private collection—albeit one that totals over ten thousand works? While not looking to sublimate art into categories, I have grouped works according to classifications that are dictated by their formal, material, and processual concerns: light, grid, materialism, surface, monochrome, and balance. Artists reappear across categories to point to the fluidity rather than rigidity of these sections and the expansiveness of the artists’ work.

As the Pinault Collection has one of the most substantial collections of Mono-ha outside of Japan, the artists included, among them Lee Ufan, Kishio Suga, Koji Enokura, Susumu Koshimizu, Nobuo Sekine, and Jiro Takamatsu, feature significantly in the exhibition, including the only space dedicated to a specific art historical category, demonstrating the radical propositions of the artists involved. […]

While most artists are grouped in these thematic sections described here, some are presented outside of these categories. One artist included in Minimal is of such significance in the Pinault Collection that her work is exhibited in a solo room: Agnes Martin. On Kawara’s date paintings also hold an important place in the Pinault Collection and are featured in the unique vitrines that surround the Rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce as well as in a solo presentation in the Salon. Meg Webster has taken on the extraordinary space of the Rotunda at the Bourse de Commerce to create an interior landscape from natural materials. Finally, Charlotte Posenenske is presented not only in the thematic section concerned with Surface but also in a series of interventions around the Bourse de Commerce building using her Vierkantrohre Serie D (Square Tubes Series D). […]

Jessica Morgan, Curator of the exhibition and Director of Dia Art Foundation, excerpt from the exhibition catalogue

Learn more at (opens in a new window) pinaultcollection.com.