While all the works presented are grounded in a minimal sensibility, the exhibition resists treating Minimalism as a closed or self-contained movement. Instead, it reveals how closely intertwined it was with parallel artistic investigations unfolding in post-war America. One of the movement's key figures, Donald Judd, acknowledged this overlap in his 1965 essay Specific Objects, where he traced a line from Mark Rothko's immersive colour fields to the object-based practices he, Frank Stella, and John Chamberlain were beginning to develop.

On display, Stella's Scramble: Green Double / Left N, Right 8 (1977), a hypnotic composition of concentric bands of colour, channels Rothko's engrossing chromatic intensity while espousing Minimalism's formal clarity. Chamberlain's Splendid Actor (1989), a compressed, chromium-plated tangle of painted steel, draws on the prefabricated vernacular of Pop Art and the poetic gestures of Abstract Expressionism. Judd's Untitled (1986–87), four wall-mounted aluminium and yellow Plexiglass units, represents the far end of this trajectory: industrial materials and bold colour reduced to pure objecthood. Where Judd focused on the objectness of a piece, Sol LeWitt focused on the system behind it. His Horizontal Progression #7 (1991) foregrounds idea over composition, transforming sculpture into a conceptual proposition. Tellingly, both Judd annd LeWitt did not consider themselves Minimalists.

Into this constellation, De Cotiis' works feel like natural extensions. Presented alongside Judd’s work, his Untitled (1997), a wall-mounted sculpture in recycled aluminium, carries the surface language of Minimalism while introducing something more layered: patina, stratification, the traces of time embedded in the material itself. Where Judd's surfaces are precise and declarative, De Cotiis' are worn and accumulated. Both share the same fundamental conviction that honesty to material is the beginning of form. That conviction extends to De Cotiis’ furniture pieces from the Foundation's own collection whose surfaces share the same material vocabulary as his sculptural work: refined yet raw, brutalist yet sensual, they deepen the dialogue rather than merely furnishing the spaces.

Seen through this lens, the exhibition becomes less about categorisation than about shared concerns: perception, material, scale, and spatial presence, made all the more resonant within Palazzo Giustinian Lolin. Far from a neutral backdrop, the palazzo's gilded cornices, terrazzo floors, and timeworn silk wall coverings throw the minimalist works into stark relief, while quietly reinforcing what the exhibition is ultimately about: a conversation across time, in which history itself is a presence in the room.