American sculptor, painter and writer, Judd studied Philosophy and History of Art at the Art Students League (1947-8; 1950-3) and at Columbia University (1949-53; 1957-62). His first works, that he would later call "half-baked abstractions", were an attempt to simplify the compositions and movement of forms that characterised post war European art. Between 1959 and 1965, he wrote art criticism for various periodicals and gave up painting to concentrate exclusively on sculpture. In 1963, he exhibited these abstract works at the Green Gallery in New York. Between 1964 and 1966, Donald Judd perfected a formal vocabulary to which he soon gave the name Minimalism and which he applied to various materials, metals in particular. In 1968 and 1987, he took part in documenta 4, 6 and 7, in Kassel. After 1970, his sculptures became increasingly influenced by the architectural surroundings and began to take on the form and function of pieces of furniture. In 1986, he created a permanent installation, made up of variations of a module of aluminium boxes, to celebrate the opening of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. In 1988, he had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York. His Minimalist mass produced sculptures, have made Judd one of the leading figures in Minimalist Art.
