Collection: DONALD JUDD

Donald Judd is a landmark figure in the history of postwar art. In the 1950s, he studied philosophy and art history and took classes at the Art Students League in New York. He was first publicly recognized as an art critic, writing reviews for Arts magazine from 1959–65. It was during this time that he developed from an abstract painter into the producer of the hollow, rectilinear volumes for which he became well known. Key to this transformation was his essay "Specific Objects,” written in 1964 and published the following year in Arts Yearbook 8. The text celebrated a new kind of artwork untethered from the traditional frameworks of painting and sculpture, focusing instead on an investigation of “real space,” or three dimensions, using commercial materials and an emphasis on whole, unified shapes.