Donald Judd: Large-Scale Works
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For further information, please contact Sarah Kurz at:
212-421-3292, or skurz@pacewildenstein.com
Opening reception to be held on Thursday, October 14, 2004
New York, October 12, 2004 - Donald Judd: Large-Scale Works, an exhibition of five sculptures including three of the artist's stacks from 1988 and 1991, as well as concrete and Cor-ten steel floor pieces from the late 1980s, opens at PaceWildenstein, 534 West 25th Street, New York City on Friday, October 15 and will remain on view through November 13, 2004. The public is invited to attend a preview of Donald Judd: Large-Scale Works on Thursday, October 14 from 6 - 8 p.m. A catalogue with full color reproductions and an essay written by Rudi Fuchs, former artistic director of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and current guest lecturer in Art Practice at the University of Amsterdam, will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.
In his discussion of Donald Judd's materially sublime and perfectly constructed works, Fuchs writes "...one senses that the materiality of the piece has imperceptibly vanished. What lingers on is almost a motionless apparition - of surface and color only, and reflected light, glow, shadows." Fuchs underlines the importance of viewing Judd as he wanted to be seen, "not as a minimal formalist, but as a master of color."
In the beginning of this year, the Tate Modern exhibited Donald Judd, a thorough retrospective of Judd's works from throughout his career, which traveled to K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf this summer and is currently on view at Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland through January 9, 2005. The exhibition is curated by Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate Gallery, London, and Marianne Stockebrand, Director of the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, and is presented in close cooperation with the Judd and Chinati Foundations.
After serving in the United States Army during the Korean War, Donald Judd (b. 1928, Excelsior Springs, MO - d. 1994, New York, NY) attended the College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA), the Art Students League (New York City), and Columbia University (New York City) where, in 1953, he received a B.S. in philosophy. In 1957 Judd had his first solo exhibition in New York, and soon thereafter he returned to Columbia University to pursue graduate study in art history. Judd's art criticism was published in Artnews, Arts Magazine and Art International between 1959 and 1965; during those early years Judd had several exhibitions at the Green Gallery in New York.
In 1971 Judd and his family moved to Marfa, a remote town in West Texas located halfway between Houston and Los Angeles, where, fifteen years later, he opened the Chinati Foundation. The Chinati Foundation is a non-profit exhibition space featuring permanent installations of Judd's art as well as work by other artists such as John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, and annually attracts over 10,000 visitors from around the world.
During his lifetime, Judd had over 125 solo exhibitions including two retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1968 and 1988) and an early museum exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum (1971). In 1975 the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, organized a Judd exhibition and published a catalogue raisonné of Judd's work. That same year the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and New York University Press jointly published Judd's Complete Writings 1959-1975. The Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands later published in 1987 Judd's Complete Writings 1975-1986.
Judd worked and taught at several academic institutions including the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (1962-64), Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (1966), Yale University, New Haven, CT (1967), and Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH (1976) and was the recipient of numerous awards including a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1967), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1968), the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (1987), the Brandeis University Medal for Sculpture (1987), the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Award (1991), the Stankowski Prize, Stuttgart (1993), and the Sikkens Award, Sassenheim, The Netherlands (1993). In 1992 Judd was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, and the Littlefield Society, University of Texas, Austin.
Judd's work can be found in major public art institutions in the United States and abroad including: Dallas Museum of Fine Art; Dia Center for the Arts, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Kunstmuseum Basel; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
The Judd Foundation was created in 1996 by Donald Judd's last will and testament to maintain and preserve his permanently-installed living and working spaces, libraries and archives in Texas and New York. The Foundation is dedicated to promoting a wider understanding of and appreciation for Judd's artistic legacy by facilitating public access to these spaces and resources, and by developing scholarly and education programs.