Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works

The first publication dedicated to Judd’s late works, which exemplify his radically new approach to color

One of the most important American artists of the 20th century, Donald Judd (1928–1994) pioneered the use of industrial materials and fabrication in serial forms to redefine the relationships between artist, art object, viewer, and space, and usher in the Minimalist style. His signature work transformed in 1984 when he radically revised his approach to color after learning of an industrial process for shaping and enameling aluminum in an array of colors from a commercial color chart. In the last decade of his life, he created multicolored works of serial forms, both wall-mounted and free-standing, which reveal an entirely new engagement with color.

Focusing entirely on Judd’s multicolored works, this handsome book features essays by leading scholars that illuminate this body of work and examine its relationship to his oeuvre as a whole. Judd was an important theorist in his own right, and his 1993 text, “Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular,” is reproduced here. An essential book on a groundbreaking artist, the volume includes images of dozens of multicolored works accompanied by preparatory drawings and collages, as well as photographs from the studio and the factory.