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Lot Essay
A leading example of Donald Judd’s large-scale “bullnose” wall progressions, untitled demonstrates the artist at the height of his artistic prowess, boldly expanding the frontiers of seriality and materiality. Of exceptional rarity, the present work is only the third early large-scale “bullnose” to ever come to auction—of the thirteen works from this series, six are in institutional and corporate collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Tate Modern, London, and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. Judd inaugurated the series the year prior in wood, before beginning to experiment with metal versions of the form. The specific use of brass recalls the sculpture of Constantin Brâncuși, a rare material for this series. The combination of luxuriant materiality and mathematical precision achieves what the critic Rosalind Krauss marveled as the “unusual beauty” of Judd’s output around 1965–66, which provokes an experience “that completely transcends the physical object” (quoted in M. Enger, “Specific Objects—The Illusion of Factuality,” in D. Elger, Donald Judd: Colorist, exh. cat., Sprengel Museum Hannover, 2000, p. 58).
Executed in polished brass, the wall piece is inspired by a simple mathematical sequence, like the Fibonacci sequence, yet wields a potent spiritual force. Read left to right, the work consists of four convex industrially constructed sections interspersed by planar negative valleys, the energetic push of the former kept restrained by the complementary pull of the latter. The first convex section is the narrowest, subsequently widening as the negative space progressively decreases in size, in line with the artist’s formula. Judd’s highly technical, scientific handling of his form and material maintains a perfectly balanced work, with each element kept in poised restraint. As the critic Julian Rose writes of the series, Judd “explored both the absolute truth of mathematical progression and the contingency of embodied experience” (“There is No Neutral Space: The Architecture of Donald Judd, Part I,” Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2022, online, accessed: [4/10/2026]). Abstract, and yet poetic in its lyrical precision, untitled is a fundamental example of Judd’s pursuit of autonomous and non-referential forms, effecting a minimalist language which fuses structure with space to establish a sense of shifting indefiniteness.
untitled perfectly illustrates Judd’s broader attempt toward fundamentally shifting the paradigm in contemporary art away from perspective- and subject-driven illusions. In a 1968 interview, Judd declared: “My stuff is just a little progression, like adding up the grocery bill… there’s no mathematical mystique to it. If it seems a reaction to European art, it’s because it doesn’t involve incredible assumptions about everything. It’s not a general statement. I can’t even begin to think about reflecting on ‘universal order,’ as the Europeans did” (quoted in G. Glueck, “Art Notes: A Box is a Box is a Box,” New York Times, March 10, 1986, p. D23).
The present work embodies Judd’s demand for a complete severance of the neo-avant-garde from the art historical tradition, tracing its European origins from Masaccio and Cimabue through to the Cubist explorations of Pablo Picasso and the expressive gesture of the New York School. Identifying “a kind of necessity and coherent, progressive continuity” toward eliminating spatial illusionism in the progression of art history, Judd declared that “the image within the rectangle… has to go entirely” (quoted in B. Haskell, Donald Judd, New Haven, 2010, p. 81).
untitled encapsulates Donald Judd’s conviction that art could achieve clarity, intensity, and coherence solely through structure. Balancing mathematical logic with sensorial resonance, the work embodies Judd’s refusal of illusionistic projection in favor of real space, real material, and direct perceptual experience. At once austere and luxuriant, rigorous and lyrical, untitled affirms Judd’s enduring contribution to postwar art—a redefinition of form as something neither expressive nor symbolic, but incontrovertibly present.
Executed in polished brass, the wall piece is inspired by a simple mathematical sequence, like the Fibonacci sequence, yet wields a potent spiritual force. Read left to right, the work consists of four convex industrially constructed sections interspersed by planar negative valleys, the energetic push of the former kept restrained by the complementary pull of the latter. The first convex section is the narrowest, subsequently widening as the negative space progressively decreases in size, in line with the artist’s formula. Judd’s highly technical, scientific handling of his form and material maintains a perfectly balanced work, with each element kept in poised restraint. As the critic Julian Rose writes of the series, Judd “explored both the absolute truth of mathematical progression and the contingency of embodied experience” (“There is No Neutral Space: The Architecture of Donald Judd, Part I,” Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2022, online, accessed: [4/10/2026]). Abstract, and yet poetic in its lyrical precision, untitled is a fundamental example of Judd’s pursuit of autonomous and non-referential forms, effecting a minimalist language which fuses structure with space to establish a sense of shifting indefiniteness.
untitled perfectly illustrates Judd’s broader attempt toward fundamentally shifting the paradigm in contemporary art away from perspective- and subject-driven illusions. In a 1968 interview, Judd declared: “My stuff is just a little progression, like adding up the grocery bill… there’s no mathematical mystique to it. If it seems a reaction to European art, it’s because it doesn’t involve incredible assumptions about everything. It’s not a general statement. I can’t even begin to think about reflecting on ‘universal order,’ as the Europeans did” (quoted in G. Glueck, “Art Notes: A Box is a Box is a Box,” New York Times, March 10, 1986, p. D23).
The present work embodies Judd’s demand for a complete severance of the neo-avant-garde from the art historical tradition, tracing its European origins from Masaccio and Cimabue through to the Cubist explorations of Pablo Picasso and the expressive gesture of the New York School. Identifying “a kind of necessity and coherent, progressive continuity” toward eliminating spatial illusionism in the progression of art history, Judd declared that “the image within the rectangle… has to go entirely” (quoted in B. Haskell, Donald Judd, New Haven, 2010, p. 81).
untitled encapsulates Donald Judd’s conviction that art could achieve clarity, intensity, and coherence solely through structure. Balancing mathematical logic with sensorial resonance, the work embodies Judd’s refusal of illusionistic projection in favor of real space, real material, and direct perceptual experience. At once austere and luxuriant, rigorous and lyrical, untitled affirms Judd’s enduring contribution to postwar art—a redefinition of form as something neither expressive nor symbolic, but incontrovertibly present.