Minimalism is the main trend that in the sixties was the protagonist of the radical change in the artistic climate, characterized by a process of reduction of reality, by anti-expressiveness, by impersonality, by emotional coldness, by the emphasis on the objectivity and physicality of work, from the reduction to the geometric elementary structures.

The term was coined in 1965 by the English art philosopher Richard Wollheim in the article entitled, precisely, Minimal Art, in the magazine Arts Magazine. He speaks of "minimal reduction", but in the sense of the artistic content, in relation to works where objects at the limit indistinguishable from everyday reality come into play, or forms and images with anonymous and impersonal values, citing on the one hand Duchamp's ready-mades , who are a fundamental point of reference for what concerns the conceptual component of every reductionist operation, and on the other Reinhardt, from whom he draws the aspect relating to the purist reduction of painting and his conception of "art for art ", aimed at eliminating all that is perceived as non-essential.