Lot Essay
A crucial moment in the development of Donald Judd's work occurred in 1962-63, as the artist began to explore the possibilities of working in three dimensions. For several years, Judd had been making paintings, and as he sought a more concrete and unambiguous statement, he became more and more dissatisfied with the limitations inherent in any two-dimensional work. Learning from the work of Jasper Johns, whose inaugural exhibition of flags and targets at Leo Castelli's gallery in 1958 had made a deep impression on Judd, and from Frank Stella, whose earliest exhibitions of stripe paintings had a profound effect on his contemporaries and critics, Judd tried to make his paintings as object-like as possible. He eliminated any illusion of space within the picture plane by having the only space be real-- either real added found objects, or real cuts made into the surface of the masonite or plywood that he used to paint on.
In a series of four works which he made at the time, Judd added curved, metal-covered elements to the top and bottom of the pictures. Three of these hybrid paintings (not quite paintings or sculptures) had light cadmium red colored central planes; the last and perhaps most satisfactory of the group, the Untitled of 1963 from the Elliott collection, has as its central element a sheet of unadorned, galvanized iron. The iron, a material which Judd would utilize in many of his most important sculptures over the remainder of his career, was the most radical use of material by the artist to date, and may have been in response to the reductive nature of Stella's works of the period, the metallic-pigmented Aluminum and Copper series of 1960-61. With his usual attention to detail, Judd hand-drilled 900 holes into the surface of the galvanized iron, to make it look more "definite": "without the holes, the metallic finish would be too illusionistic, too soft. It's to make a firmer surface." (D. Judd, Complete Writings: 1959-1975, Halifax and New York 1975, p. 43).
Untitled, 1963, was included by Judd in his breakthrough exhibition at The Green Gallery in New York in December, 1963. It was subsequently included in both of the major museum retrospectives done during Judd's lifetime, at the National Gallery of Canada in 1975 and at the Whitney Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art in 1988-89.
In a series of four works which he made at the time, Judd added curved, metal-covered elements to the top and bottom of the pictures. Three of these hybrid paintings (not quite paintings or sculptures) had light cadmium red colored central planes; the last and perhaps most satisfactory of the group, the Untitled of 1963 from the Elliott collection, has as its central element a sheet of unadorned, galvanized iron. The iron, a material which Judd would utilize in many of his most important sculptures over the remainder of his career, was the most radical use of material by the artist to date, and may have been in response to the reductive nature of Stella's works of the period, the metallic-pigmented Aluminum and Copper series of 1960-61. With his usual attention to detail, Judd hand-drilled 900 holes into the surface of the galvanized iron, to make it look more "definite": "without the holes, the metallic finish would be too illusionistic, too soft. It's to make a firmer surface." (D. Judd, Complete Writings: 1959-1975, Halifax and New York 1975, p. 43).
Untitled, 1963, was included by Judd in his breakthrough exhibition at The Green Gallery in New York in December, 1963. It was subsequently included in both of the major museum retrospectives done during Judd's lifetime, at the National Gallery of Canada in 1975 and at the Whitney Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art in 1988-89.