Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website DONALD JUDD | Opening 24 July | Salzburg Villa Kast | until 28 August 2021
luglio 12, 2021 - Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

DONALD JUDD | Opening 24 July | Salzburg Villa Kast | until 28 August 2021

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

DONALD JUDD at Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg presents a group of works from 1977—1991, a period in which the artist’s work was defined by the principles that had formed his artistic vision. The exhibition provides insight into the diversity of Donald Judd’s formal and material repertoire, highlighting his distinctive visual vocabulary and deliberate use of mathematical proportions. Spanning works in plywood,
painted wood, plexiglass and aluminum – media through which he interrogated the relationship between form and color – the exhibition features work that has never previously been exhibited, alongside seminal floor works which remain at the core of Judd’s practice. The earliest example of this type of incised cadmium red light floor work was exhibited in Judd’s first ever solo exhibition at Green Gallery, New
York (1963—64) and now forms part of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s collection in Washington, D.C.

It was during the 1980s and early 1990s that Donald Judd’s work was largely conceived and shown in Europe. During this period, he lived in Switzerland and began his collaboration with the Swiss manufacturers that resulted in new artistic developments such as his multi-colored wall pieces in aluminum. ‘Exuberance is not, or was not, the word that comes to mind in connection with #donaldjudd […] but his latest work makes this exhilarating playfulness as obvious as his intellect,’ remarked art critic Larry Berryman in his description of Judd‘s work from this time (Arts Review, March 14, 1986). A series of exhibitions in galleries and institutions across Europe followed, including a major retrospective in 1987 that was organised by the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and travelled to the Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf; Musée d‘Art Moderne de Paris; Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; and Castello di Rivoli, Turin.

Highlights of the exhibition include three rectangular plywood floor works – one with a plain plywood surface and two painted in Judd’s signature colour of cadmium red light. The wood boxes are relatively inert as forms, with height being the smallest of their dimensions. Each work features an aluminum inlay of varying configurations set into the upper exterior plane. With his free-standing wooden floor works, Judd had liberated himself from the wall and thus from pictorial associations. He consistently returned to forms first used early in his career and worked on a new group of rectangular floor boxes – from which the three works in the exhibition originate – from 1989 onwards. These works, fabricated in Douglas fir plywood, are either painted cadmium red light or unpainted. While each work has a trough that runs the length of the top plane, the inlaid aluminum tube or cylinder is unique, setting each work apart from others in the group.

Two works from this group – one unpainted with a thin-walled tube and one red with a solid cylinder inlay – are permanently installed in Judd’s Ranch Office in Marfa, Texas, which further speaks to the importance that this specific group held for the artist. A second red painted piece from this group is now part of the collection of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark. 

Further information in the press release to download