Judd | Dibujos - grabados - muebles (Judd | Drawings – prints – furniture)

About

Judd (Missouri 1928 – New York 1994) was a prolific artist, draftsman and printmaker who designed nearly a hundred pieces of furniture for everyday use. 

One of the foremost sculptors of our time, Judd (1928–1994) refused any attempt to label his art. His revolutionary approach to form, materials, working methods, and display broke from the prevailing modes of art making at the time. His work, in turn, changed the language of modern sculpture and today he remains a leading exponent of the minimal art and the most important theorist for writings such as Specific Objects (1964).

As he expressed:“The configuration and the scale of art cannot be transposed into furniture and architecture. The intent of art is different from that of the latter, which must be functional; if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous”.

His passion for architecture, spaces and how to live in them led him to designing furniture for his own personal use, which has now become an important reference in overall furniture design.

After graduating in Philosophy and Art History at Columbia University and taking part in Painting Studies at the Art Students League, Donald Judd began his career in the 1940s as a painter directly connected to the expressionist movement. In 1968 he established his own studio in New York, acquiring the 101 Spring Street building, one made of cast iron designed in 1870 by Nicholas Whyte. The five floors were renovated and decorated over the years through the acquisition and exchange of works by other artists. Always interested in finding a suitable environment for installing his work, in 1986 he established the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, where large-scale works of his can be seen permanently in the middle of a desert and in rehabilitated hangars, as well as works by other contemporary artists and colleagues of his generation.

In the early 1960s, Judd exhibited regularly and extensively in galleries in New York and throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Some of his most important exhibitions have taken place at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1968 & 1988); The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (1975); Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, (1987); and The Saint Louis Art Museum (1991) among others. More recent exhibitions have taken place at The Museum of Modern Art in Saitama, Japan (1999); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001); Tate Modern, London (2004), The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, Missouri (2013-2014) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York - MoMA (2020).