DONALD JUDD (1928-1994)

DONALD JUDD Donald Judd (1928 - 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed). In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy. It created an outpouring of seemingly effervescent works that defied the term “minimalism”. Nevertheless, he is generally considered the leading international exponent of “minimalism,” and its most important theoretician through such seminal writings as “Specific Objects” (1964).

The Panoramas Gallery organized his first solo exhibition in 1957. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organized the first retrospective of his work in 1968.[24] During this decade, the artist received many fellowships, among them a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1968. In 1975 the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, organized a Judd exhibition and published a catalogue raisonné of Judd’s work. He participated in his first Venice Biennale in 1980, and in Documenta, Kassel, in 1982. In 1987, Judd was honored by a large exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; this show traveled to Düsseldorf, Paris, Barcelona, and Turin. The Whitney Museum organized a second, traveling retrospective of his work in 1988. Another major European survey was mounted by Tate Modern in 2004.

Judd’s work is represented in collections including: the Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna; the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran; the Hallen für Neue Kunst Schaffhausen, Switzerland; the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; the Tate Modern and the Tate Britain, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Dia: Beacon, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington.

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