Donald Judd Biography
Donald Judd (1928-1994) was an influential sculptor, designer, furniture maker and art critic. Before moving to New York to attend the Art Students League, Judd lived in various locations across the United States and served in the Army. While in New York, he also took classes in philosophy and art history at Columbia University, which led to a lifelong intellectual engagement with his art. In the 1960s, Judd finally moved away from two-dimensional works of art to create specific objects that were exclusively three-dimensional, focusing on the nature of their material and how they interacted with their surroundings. To gain complete control over the surroundings of his artwork, Judd purchased homes at 101 Spring Street, New York City, in 1968, and in Marfa, Texas that remain residences that hold permanent exhibitions of his work. In these spaces in 1973 he was able to design all the furniture and artistic installations. He lived in Marfa until his death in 1994. Considered by many to be an important figure in Minimalist Art, Judd himself disavowed this classification. His furniture and sculptures explore the specific nature of objects, their spatiality and their relationship with the viewer. Born in 1928 in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. Like his peers Tony Smith, Dan Flavin, and Robert Morris, Judd carefully considered the environment into which his sculptures were introduced. Judd is also represented in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and the Tate Gallery in London, among other institutions.
