born 1928, Excelsior Springs, Mo.; d.
1994, New York City
Donald Judd was born June 3, 1928, in Excelsior Springs,
Missouri. He registered at the Art Students League, New
York, in 1948 but transferred a few months later to the
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. In
1949, he moved back to New York to study philosophy at
Columbia University while he took art classes at the Art
Students League.
The Panoramas Gallery organized his first solo exhibition
in 1957. The same year, Judd took art-history classes at
Columbia University. He began to write articles for Art
News in 1959 and the next year became a contributing
editor for Arts Magazine until 1965, when he wrote
reviews for Art International. In the early 1960s, he
switched from painting to sculpture and started to develop
an interest in architecture. Judd challenged the artistic
convention of originality by using industrial processes and
materials—such as steel, concrete, and plywood—to create
large, hollow Minimalist sculptures, mostly in the form of
boxes, which he arranged in repeated simple geometric forms.
His second solo show was held at the Green Gallery, New
York, in 1963. From 1962 to 1964, he worked as an instructor
at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. The Leo
Castelli Gallery, New York, organized the first of a long
series of individual exhibitions in 1966. This year, Judd
was also hired as a visiting artist at Dartmouth College,
Hanover, New Hampshire, and the following year he taught
sculpture at Yale University, New Haven. The Whitney Museum
of American Art, New York, organized the first retrospective
of his work in 1968. During this decade, the artist received
many fellowships, among them a grant from the John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1968.
In 1971, he participated in the Guggenheim
International Award exhibition at the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York, along with other Minimalist and
Conceptual artists. Judd moved to Marfa, Texas, in 1972. He
participated in his first Venice Biennale in 1980,
and in Documenta, Kassel, in 1982. In 1984, he
started designing furniture for the purpose of
manufacturing. During the first half of the 1980s, Judd drew
the plans for the Chinati Foundation, Marfa; the renovated
compound of buildings opened in 1986 as a showcase for his
sculptures, as well as for the work of other contemporary
artists.
In 1987, Judd was honored by a large exhibition at the
Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; this show traveled to
D�sseldorf, Paris, Barcelona, and Turin. The Whitney
Museum of American Art organized a traveling retrospective
of his work in 1988. In 1992, he was elected a member of the
Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, and received a prize
from the Stankowski Foundation, Stuttgart, increasing the
list of his numerous awards. During his lifetime, Judd
published a large body of theoretical writings, in which he
rigorously promoted the cause of Minimalist Art; these
essays were consolidated in two volumes published in 1975
and 1987. The artist died February 12, 1994, in New York.