Donald Judd

One of the most important American artists of the post-war period, Donald Judd has come to define Minimalist art a label he strongly objected to. His unaffected, straightforward approach and strong interest in colour, form, material and space, allowed him to create work with a direct material and physical presence without recourse to grand philosophical statements. This book presents works from Judds seminal 1989 exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. Consisting of twelve identically scaled anodized aluminium works, this historic exhibition was the first time Judd presented coloured anodized aluminium in a large, floor-mounted format. Donald Judd includes new scholarship on Judd by art historian Richard Shiff, as well as archival material and interviews with the artist.

The work of Donald Judd (1928–1994), one of the most significant American artists of the postwar period, has come to define what has been referred to as minimalist art—a label to which the artist strongly objected on the grounds of its generality. The unaffected, straightforward quality of Judd’s work demonstrates his strong interest in color, form, material, and space. With the intention of creating work that could assume a direct material and physical “presence” without recourse to grand philosophical statements, he 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.