Author Description

Like no other sculptor today, Donald Judd has informed our understanding of art and its relationship to space. The Panoramas Gallery organized his first solo exhibition in 1957, at a time in which he was still focused on painting, but moving from the flat picture plane towards the third dimension. His cadmium red pictures cut through with stripes or incisions led the viewer to perceive space as a basic fact of sculpture. From there Judd moved toward a complete abandonment of painting, recognizing, in the early 60s, that "actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface." His switch from painting to sculpture was coincident with a growing interest in architecture and in industrial processes and materials, such as galvanized steel, concrete, plywood and aluminum, which he used to create large, hollow, Minimalist sculptures.This decisive development is documented here for the first time, from the early work of the 1950s up to 1968, the point at which Judd's artistic vocabulary reached its complete formation. Numerous works, including previously unrecorded paintings, sculptures, sketches and works on paper appear here alongside unpublished documents and texts by Judd himself.