As one of the most significant American artists of the post-war period, Donald Judd’s practice has come to define what has been referred to as Minimalist art. Judd began as a painter in the late 1940s, although he soon introduced three-dimensional elements into the surface of his work. His first sculptural objects took the form of shallow reliefs, and by 1963 he had begun to create freestanding works that were presented directly on the floor and the wall. Throughout his practice, Judd used materials such as plywood, steel, concrete, Plexiglas, and aluminum and employed commercial fabricators in order to get the surfaces and angles he desired. He created declaratively simple, fundamental sculptural forms, many of which took the shape of simple “boxes” or “stacks,” which he would often arrange according to repeated or sequential progressions.

 

With the intention of creating work that could assume a direct material and physical presence without recourse to grand philosophical statements, Judd eschewed the classical ideals of representational sculpture to create a rigorous visual vocabulary that sought clear and definite objects as its primary mode of articulation.

 

The work of Donald Judd (1928-1994) is included in numerous museum collections. Permanent installations of the artist’s work can be found at Judd Foundation spaces in New York City, at 101 Spring Street (the newly restored building will open to the public in June 2013), and Marfa, Texas, along with the neighboring Chinati Foundation.

 

Judd Foundation (Rainer Judd and Flavin Judd, Co-Presidents) is exclusively represented by David Zwirner. In 2011, the gallery (in its West 19th Street location in New York) exhibited a selection of works by the artist drawn from Judd’s seminal 1989 exhibition held at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany. In February 2013, David Zwirner opened a new, additional New York gallery on West 20th Street and a major work by Judd – an untitled five-unit sculpture from 1991 – was on view in the inaugural show, Dan Flavin and Donald Judd.