In Venice, Vincenzo de Cotiis Stages a Sweeping Exploration of Minimalism
Installed throughout Palazzo Giustinian Lolin to commemorate the Venice Biennale, the exhibition pairs landmark works by Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko, and Dan Flavin with the Italian architect’s weathered material investigations
When Vincenzo de Cotiis inaugurated his namesake foundation at Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, the Baroque landmark overlooking one of Venice’s most scenic waterways, he set out to cultivate exhibitions that examine the exchange between art, architecture, and collectible furniture. The Italian multihyphenate architect and his wife, Claudia Rose, who oversees the foundation, introduced the venue with a restrained presentation of monumental arches crafted from recycled fiberglass, ancient stone, and Murano glass. Installed within the palazzo’s central courtyard, the askew structures still command the procession through the building and now frame a probing exhibition about Minimalism’s enduring legacy.
Timed to the 61st Venice Biennale, “Minimal Legends” occupies the palazzo’s richly layered interiors with an installation that bridges generations and artistic movements. Rather than mounting a straightforward historical survey, the show stages a conversation between nearly 20 works by seminal Minimalist artists and their contemporaries. John Chamberlain, Sol LeWitt, Larry Bell, Agnes Martin, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, and Bridget Riley appear alongside two works by De Cotiis himself, whose salvaged-material compositions often carry the weathered patina of objects unearthed from centuries-old Venetian architecture.
Though each work stems from a minimalist sensibility, many stretch beyond the movement’s accepted boundaries. LeWitt, who long resisted categorization, appears through one of his iconic Progression works. He once argued that labels “connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist.” The exhibition adopts that same expansive outlook—though it centers on Minimalism, it also acknowledges the adjacent movements that informed its evolution, from LeWitt’s conceptual investigations and Larry Bell’s Light and Space experiments to Rothko’s meditative fields of color and Chamberlain’s volatile steel assemblages rooted in Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art.
Curated with Lawrence Van Hagen of LVH Art, the show opens with Agnes Martin and Bridget Riley, whose works probe structure, perception, and repetition through vastly different visual languages. Elsewhere, a thread identified by Donald Judd in his landmark 1965 essay Specific Objects emerges throughout. Judd cited Rothko’s luminous color fields as a precursor to the object-driven work pursued by himself, Stella, and Chamberlain. Rothko’s dissolution of figuration into atmospheric expanses of color reverberates through Stella’s geometric canvases, Chamberlain’s compressed steel volumes, and Judd’s rigorously ordered constructions.
Several works recast the artwork as a spatial encounter. Carl Andre’s Fifth Copper Square transforms the terrazzo floor into a gleaming copper plane that alters one’s movement through the room, while Dan Flavin’s Untitled (to Sabine and Holger) and a reflective glass sculpture by Larry Bell manipulate light across the palazzo’s faded frescoes and veined marble surfaces. Industrial materials recur throughout; Judd’s repeated aluminum and plexiglass volumes radiate a cool clarity, while Chamberlain’s Splendid Actor twists chromium-plated steel into a jagged, muscular mass. De Cotiis extends that material investigation through Untitled (1997), a recycled aluminum piece whose heavily worked surface carries scorched tones and corroded textures.
Among the palazzo’s spellbinding worn materials, terrazzo floors, and monumental chandeliers, “Minimal Legends” traces how generations of artists reconsidered perception and spatial experience. De Cotiis’s own contributions deepen that lineage through surfaces marked by oxidation, erosion, and layered interventions that echo the enduring appeal of La Serenissima itself.