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Donald Judd
Untitled, 1962

Cadmium red light oil and wax on Liquitex and sand on Masonite, black oil on wood, with aluminum
48 × 96 × 7 1/8 inches (121.9 × 243.8 × 18 cm) (unframed)

Artist
Donald Judd 96
Type
Relief 11
Date
1960s 72
Location
Whyte Building 4

This shallow relief, which incorporates a folded aluminum triangle, was reproduced widely in reviews of New Work: Part I at Green Gallery, New York (January 8–February 2, 1963). This was Donald Judd’s first group exhibition at Green Gallery, where a year later he would exhibit his first solo show to include work in three dimensions (Don Judd, December 17, 1963–January 11, 1964). Of the three pieces by Judd shown in New Work: Part I, Michael Fried wrote that they “make one want to see more of his work.”1 And of the same work, Sidney Tillim wrote, “the work’s claim upon space is real, an abstract object that verges on sculpture while retaining its pictorial axis.”2

By incorporating found, real objects into his paintings during this period, Judd avoided illusionistic representation. “Without trying to obscure our sense of what they obviously are,” Roberta Smith wrote, “he makes them abstract.”3

1Michael Fried “New York Letter,” Art International, February 1963, 64.
2Sidney Tillim, “New York Exhibitions: Month in Review,” Arts Magazine, March 1963, 62.
3Roberta Smith, “Donald Judd,” in Donald Judd: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Objects, and Wood-Blocks 1960–1974, ed. Brydon Smith. Exh. cat. (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975),19.

Selected Bibliography

Fried, Michael. “New York Letter.” Art International, February 1963, 64 (ill.).

Tillim, Sidney. “New York Exhibitions: Month in Review.” Arts Magazine, March 1963, 62.

Agee, William C. “Unit, Series, Site: A Judd Lexicon.” Art in America, May/June 1975, 40, 41. Reprinted (revised): Agee, William C. The Sculpture of Donald Judd. Exh. cat. Corpus Christi: Art Museum of South Texas, 1977, 7.

Smith, Brydon, ed. Donald Judd: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Objects, and Wood-Blocks 1960–1974. Exh. cat. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975, 19, 50 (exh. cat. no. 8), 109 (DSS cat. no. 28).

Haskell, Barbara. Donald Judd. Exh. cat. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1989, 27, 32 (fig. 13), 158.

Batchelor, David. Minimalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 21, 22 (fig. 19), 23.

Meyer, James. Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001, 46 (fig. 33), 47 (fig. 34), 48, 50.

Serota, Nicholas, ed. Donald Judd. Exh. cat. London: Tate Publishing, 2004, 89, 90 (fig. 35).