50 years – Gallerynote 2/2019

May 4 to July 12, 2019

Donald Judd (1928 – 1994)

The first exhibition with Donald Judd at Galerie Verna was held from December 18, 1973 to February 21, 1974. This was followed by an intensive and profound connection between the artist and the gallery that endured until 1994.

From 1984 to 1987, a new group of works that thoroughly broke with custom was created in Switzerland, fabricated by Lehni AG in Dübendorf near Zurich. Between 1986 and 1994, a second production site came into service in the Canton of Aargau in Central Switzerland by the name of Aluminium AG Menziken.

The gallery helped to locate and facilitate these production opportunities at industrial enterprises with the support of the artist and product designer Andreas Christen (1936 – 2006).

Donald Judd valued the precise and professional mode of production that was available to him in these facilities. At each site, a number of highly trained technicians worked on his objects and Judd always welcomed their expert advice. It was the realization of his ideal vision of the pro-duction site of the works as an extension of the contemporary artist’s studio.

In the innovative 1960s, Donald Judd made a radical decision. The production of artworks should move beyond the romantic model of the atelier artist and adopt the mode of fabrication employed for utilitarian objects. The creation of art should no longer be the result and hence a testimonial to the craftsmanship of the artist. He found it sentimental and unfitting that the personal imprint of the artist should be the guarantor of a work’s quality.

The invention of the work occurred on the basis of a process demanding intellectual clarity and the reflected penetration of the creative act. The conscious decisions and necessary definitions on the part of the artist thus enabled the success of the work. For Judd this emancipation of the contemporary artist from an overpowering past was a condition for the modernization of fine art.

The Judd exhibition that we will be presenting in the coming weeks forms the focal point of the gallery’s 2019 art year. With this show, we look forward to highlighting the fifty years of activity of the Annemarie Verna Galerie.

We thank Ellie Meyer and Flavin Judd at the Judd Foundation for their encouragement and support of our project.

Exhibitions

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007)
A Wall Drawing Retrospective
Yale University Art Gallery and Williams College Museum of Art
November 16, 2008 – 2033

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