Donald Judd

American, 1928-1994. Donald Judd is one of the most important figures in post war art and is commonly associated with minimalism, a term he strongly objected too. Donald Judd began his career as a painter, studying art history and taking classes at the Arts Students League in New York. However, by 1963 Judd had established his vocabulary of forms — ‘stacks’, ‘boxes’ and ‘progressions’ — which would occupy him for the next thirty years, eventually leading to the now recognizable freestanding works made of metals, industrial plywood, concrete and Plexiglas. Key to this transformation was his essay “Specific Objects,” written in 1964 and published the following year in Arts Yearbook 8. The text celebrated a new kind of artwork which investigated the concept of “real space,” or three dimensions, using commercial materials and an emphasis on whole, unified shapes. Originally conceived in 1977, and created in 1996, the Judd Foundation was formed in order to preserve the works permanently installed in living and working spaces, libraries, and archives in New York and Marfa, Texas.