Beginning with a show in April 2019, the first in Europe in 20 years, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac will represent Donald Judd and the Judd Foundation in Europe. The show will take place in Ropac’s space in the Marais in Paris. The last major retrospective of Donald Judd’s work was at the Whitney in 1988. MoMA announced its plans for a historic show in 2015 but the event has been delayed by the museum’s building plan. In 2004, the Tate Modern held a survey. In May 2006, the Judd Foundation sold a substantial number of works at Christie’s. The event ignited the market for the sculptor’s work:
Major works by Donald Judd are currently featured in Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s Pantin exhibition Monumental Minimal (above) on view until March 2019, which includes two rare monumental vertical MENZIKEN works dating from 1988, each formed in aluminium and coloured Plexiglas.
In 1968, the first major museum exhibition of his works in three dimensions was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In the same year Judd purchased 101 Spring Street, a five-story cast-iron building in New York where he developed his idea of the permanent installation, his belief that the placement of a work of art was as critical to its understanding as the work itself. The building became a platform for his art and that of others, with Judd’s works permanently exhibited alongside those of his contemporaries.
In 1971, Judd first visited Marfa, Texas where he eventually established studios, living quarters and ranches, now part of Judd Foundation. In Marfa, Judd’s work increased in scale and complexity as he started making room-sized installations. In 1986, he transformed this the public part of this unique large-scale project into the Chinati Foundation, a landmark of contemporary art as much as it is a key expression of his aesthetic in which his work was to be exhibited permanently alongside fellow artists including Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Richard Long, and Ilya Kabakov. Until the end of his life in 1994, he endeavoured to question the notion of the art object, using a variety of materials, a crafted approach and rigorous experimentation with colour.
