NEW YORK, NY.- David Zwirner announced its exclusive representation of Judd Foundation.
Judd Foundation was created by the artist Donald Judd to maintain and preserve his permanently installed living and working spaces in New York and Marfa, Texas. The Foundation promotes a wider understanding of and appreciation for Judd’s artistic legacy by facilitating public access to his spaces, archives, libraries, and works.
David Zwirner will be Judd Foundation’s exclusive commercial gallery. In this role, David Zwirner will promote and further the legacy of Donald Judd through curated exhibitions at its gallery spaces; the development of new scholarship on the artist’s work through publications and international exhibitions; and through the sale of artworks consigned to the gallery by the Foundation. The gallery is preparing a historical survey exhibition of Donald Judd’s work, planned for 2011.
Judd Foundation originates from 1977 with the first formation by Donald Judd of a foundation to permanently preserve his work. Formally organized in 1996, the Foundation owns and maintains the artist’s historic home and studio at 101 Spring Street, in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, and 15 buildings that comprised his private living and working spaces in Marfa, Texas. In addition to its ongoing programs, the Foundation’s recent initiatives include the launch of a major restoration of the 101 Spring Street building. Estimated for completion in 2013, the restoration will allow for greater public access to permanently installed works by Donald Judd and his contemporaries. In addition, the Foundation recently announced a comprehensive catalogue raisonné project, managed by Katy Rogers, to document Donald Judd’s work. The Foundation has also digitized the artist’s personal library in Marfa, making it available to the public online on its website; and its Advisory Committee on Conservation and Restoration has initiated a series of publications devoted to promoting guidelines for the care and handling of works by the artist.
Donald Judd (b. 1928 Excelsior Springs, Missouri; d. 1994 New York) was an American artist recognized for his ground- breaking achievements in art, architecture, and design. One of the most significant artists of the postwar period, he radically expanded the possibilities for sculpture, developing a rigorous formal vocabulary and employing industrial materials to produce singular objects that not only addressed form, material, color, and scale; but which also emphasized the relationship between the work of art, the viewer, and the surrounding space.
During his lifetime, Donald Judd was affiliated with a number of historically significant galleries in the U.S., including the Green Gallery, New York, where he presented a seminal exhibition of his early “specific objects” in 1963; and the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, which represented the artist from 1965 to 1985. Judd then worked with Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, where he had a number of solo shows, and PaceWildenstein, which represented him through the end of his life. The artist’s work has been exhibited internationally since the 1960s and is included in numerous museum collections. A survey exhibition of the artist’s work was organized by the Tate Modern, London, in 2004, and traveled to the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein- Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and the Kunstmuseum Basel. Permanent installations of the artist’s work can be found in Marfa, Texas, at Judd Foundation spaces and at the neighboring Chinati Foundation; his work is also on long-term view at Dia:Beacon, New York.
David Zwirner is a leading contemporary art gallery active in both the primary and secondary markets. Since 1993, when he opened his first gallery in New York, Zwirner has helped foster the careers of some of the most influential artists working today, including Luc Tuymans and Neo Rauch, who had their U.S. debut exhibitions at the gallery. The gallery has maintained long-term representation of artists as varied as Francis Alÿs, Stan Douglas, Marlene Dumas, Chris Ofili, Raymond Pettibon, and Thomas Ruff, in addition to the Estates of Alice Neel, Jason Rhoades, and Al Taylor, among others. In the secondary market, the gallery has become known for presenting historically-researched exhibitions and publications devoted to the work of modern and contemporary masters.
With the addition of Donald Judd, the gallery continues its goal of promoting the legacy of Minimal and new abstract art by significant artists that came to prominence in the 1960s. The gallery represents the artists On Kawara and John McCracken and the Estates of Gordon Matta-Clark and Fred Sandback; in 2009, the gallery announced its exclusive representation of the Estate of Dan Flavin. Recent exhibitions presented by the gallery include Dan Flavin: Series and Progressions (2009), an ambitious survey of the artist’s work in fluorescent light; Edward Kienholz: Roxys, which presented a seminal installation by the artist; Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970, a critically-acclaimed survey of West Coast Minimalism (both 2010); and John McCracken: New Works in Bronze and Steel, which will be on view through October 23, 2010.
