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Property From a German Collector DONALD JUDD (1928-1994) UNTITLED signed twice and dated "Judd 19...

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Property From a German Collector DONALD JUDD (1928-1994) UNTITLED signed twice and dated  Judd 19...
Property From
a German Collector
DONALD JUDD
(1928-1994)
UNTITLED
signed twice and dated "Judd 1965 Judd" on the interior
galvanized iron
61/4 x 271/8 x 243/8 in. (16 x 69 x 62 cm)
executed in 1965
ESTIMATE: $150,000-200,000

PROVENANCE
Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, ZÜRICH

EXHIBITED
BERLIN, Galerie René Block, ABC Art, Cool Art, Minimum Art, Minimal Art, Primary Structure, Neue Monumente, IMI Art, June 1968,
p. 10 (illustrated)
OTTaWA, National Gallery of Canada, DONALD JUDD, May 24-July 6, 1975, p. 68, cat. no. 26 (another example exhibited; illustrated)

LITERATURE
D. Del Balso, R. Smith and B. Smith, DONALD JUDD: CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF PAINTINGS, OBJECTS, AND WOOD-BLOCKS 1960-1974, OTTaWA, 1974, p. 127, cat. no. 64 (illustrated)
P. Schjeldahl, ART OF OUR TIME: THE SAATCHI COLLECTION, LONDON, 1984, pl. 22 (another example illustrated)
A shape, a volume, a color, a surface is something itself. It shouldn't be concealed as part of a fairly different whole.
Donald Judd, "Portfolio: 4 Sculptors," PERSPECTA, 1967, p. 44
Executed in 1965, UNTITLED ranks among Donald Judd's earliest wall-mounted boxes and certainly among his earliest sculptures made from industrial materials. It was just prior to this time that Judd broke from painting to sculpture in the desire to rid his work of all allusion and metaphor, characteristics that he believed to be endemic to that medium. He strove for logic and clarity in his artwork and was determined to focus on formal properties and objective facts. To Judd, the only principles worthy of trust were materiality and concreteness. Color, surface, form and texture were paramount. "Art, Judd reiterated, was not a special realm over which the artist presided as high priest, but a realm in which very limited, specific truths could be articulated" (B. Haskell, DONALD JUDD, NEW YORK, 1988, p. 38).
The artist's sculptural output evolved from open floor structures to closed rectangular boxes in 1963. Most of his works to this point were made from wood. In March 1964, Judd had Bernstein Brothers, a company that fabricated metal, cover a wooden wall box in galvanized iron, the progenitor to UNTITLED. This process opened a new dimension to Judd's work. The lightness and clarity of the structure as it was done in metal was very different from the absorbent surface and variable thickness of the wooden prototypes. The polished industrial material conjoined with the spare, geometric form was a seminal feature and turning point in the artist's œuvre.