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PROPERTY FROM THE VANTHOURNOUT COLLECTION

1928-1994
UNTITLED PROGRESSION

6 ¼ x 110 ¾ x 6 in. 15.4 x 281.3 x 15.1 cm.

Stamp signed and dated 90-16 on the interior

clear anodized aluminum with burgundy anodized aluminum

Executed in 1990, this work is unique.

PROVENANCE

Jean Bernier Gallery, Athens
Acquired by the present owner from the above in May 1995

EXHIBITED

Athens, Galerie Jean Bernier, Donald Judd, May -- July 1991

LITERATURE

Jean Bernier and Marina Eliades, Jean Bernier Gallery 1977 -- 1998, Athens, 1998, pl. 3, n.p., illustrated in color

NOTE

Donald Judd was a sculptural master of innovation, creating a new lexicon of sculptural concerns along with his contemporaries in Minimalist art, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt. In the early 1960s, Judd moved from the handmade toward the fabricated, eschewing the traditional conceit that traces of the artist's hand are integral to aesthetic expression. Judd chose industrial materials such as steel, copper, iron, aluminum and Plexiglas, to create the most precise and elegant forms for his sculptures.

For Judd, the wall and its relation to the art object was integral to his aesthetic concept. Beginning in the 1960s, Judd's vertical sculptures (Stacks) and horizontal sculptures (Progression) were units divided in a sequence of solid versus void, which also articulated the real space of the room with an unprecedented degree of precision and simplicity.

In order to break with the long tradition of hierarchical and `artistic' decision-making in formal elements, Judd employed numeric systems as a structural basis for his `specific objects', as he referred to his work. In 1964, Judd developed his first horizontal Progressions and throughout his career tirelessly searched to perfect them. Like the prototypes of the 1960s, Untitled 1990 is based on the Fibonacci sequence - a mathematical concept applying to the progressive arrangement of units or numbers that are proportionately related one to another. In this work, the burgundy-colored elements become larger as they progress from left to right and the volume of the following box is double that of the previous element. The negative spaces have the same proportional formula, but in reverse: each void becomes smaller by half from left to right.