MAXImin

With an exhibition title that has its origin in modern theories of rational choice and games, MAXImin is comprised of more than 110 works by 82 artists, and is the result of a collaboration between the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection, Stuttgart, and the Fundación Juan March, Madrid. The exhibition, conceived by both institutions, seeks to present to the public a methodical history focusing on minimalist art trends over the past century within both the context of their abstract predecessors and their contemporary interpretations. Thus, it is a history seen from the perspective of the mutual ‘method’ they share: that of maximum minimization.

The exhibition presents the formally ‘minimalized’ approaches of certain artistic trends of the 1960s and ’70s in a much larger context. To the extent that it contemplates these trends from a more methodical rather than thematic perspective, Minimalism no longer refers to a solely American movement of the 1960s, but emerges as a tendency shared by the work of artists from highly diverse eras and places. Thus, the exhibition is comprised of works that include the distant ancestors of Minimalism in Central European Abstract Painting of the early 20th century—especially in southern Germany—as well as those who have incorporated Abstract and Minimal Art trends and traditions throughout the century and into the present day on four continents.