Displaying items by tag: minimalism

This November, Christie’s will present an unrivalled selection of paintings and sculpture by some of the titans of twentieth century art. From Andy Warhol’s opulent Four Marilyns to Cy Twombly’s sublime Untitled, and Louise Bourgeois’ monumental Spider to Lucian Freud’s magnificent portrait The Brigadier –the very best examples of Pop, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and Conceptual Art are represented. The role of the collector is also honored, with a selection of Pop works from the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection, works of Arte Povera from the Collection of Ileana Sonnabend and the Estate of Nina Sundell, and an impressive grouping of works by Alexander Calder from the Arthur and Anita Kahn Collection.

Donald Judd may be primarily known for his minimalist sculptures, but a new temporary exhibition at the artist's former private residence in Soho, New York, will shine the spotlight on prints, an under-known facet of his work.

For four decades, Judd thoroughly explored the printmaking process, creating works using aquatint, etching, and screenprinting, with a special focus on woodcuts. The exhibition is curated by the artist's son, Flavin, the co-president of the Judd Foundation.

One of the most important spaces for the permanent exhibition of artists from the Minimalist generation — the Hallen für Neue Kunst (or Halls for New Art), in Schaffhausen, Switzerland — was forced to close last year, the victim of a protracted lawsuit that depleted its modest resources. But at least for a while, Europe’s loss will be New York’s gain. The Dia Art Foundation, whose focus on the artists of the 1960s and ’70s made it a kind of American sister to the Schaffhausen institution, announced that it would mount the first American survey in more than 20 years of the work of Robert Ryman, whose austere white-on-white paintings are among the most important of the postwar period and who long had a sizable body of work on display in Schaffhausen.

The best artists, the sculptor Donald Judd wrote, are “original and obdurate; they’re the gravel in the pea soup.” During a career of almost four decades, Judd was never shy about relegating other artists to the soup and positioning himself as the gravel, in more ways than one. In addition to being one of the most important sculptors of the postwar period and a pioneer of the Minimalist movement, he was combative, doctrinaire and wholly uncompromising about his work.

On Friday, February 6, 2015, the Blanton Museum of Art announced that it will acquire and construct Ellsworth Kelly’s only building. Kelly, an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with Color Field painting, hard-edge painting, and Minimalism, conceived the stand-alone structure in 1986 for a private collector. At the age of 91, he is finally seeing the project come to fruition.

Austin, a 73-by-60-foot stone building, will be constructed on the museum’s grounds at the University of Texas at Austin. The structure will feature luminous colored glass windows, a totemic wood sculpture, and fourteen black-and-white stone panels in marble -- all designed by the artist.  Kelly has gifted the Blanton the design concept for the work, including the building, the totem sculpture, the interior panels, and the glass windows. Once it is complete, Austin will become part of the museum’s permanent collection. The Blanton has launched a campaign to raise $15 million to realize the project and has received commitments totaling $7 million.

The Turner Prize winning artist Sir Anish Kapoor is currently presenting an exhibition of recent work at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. As one of the most influential sculptors of his generation, Kapoor’s work combines the formal concerns of minimalism with concerns for the material and psychical nature of both the object and the self. Known primarily for his large site-specific installations and objects that test the phenomenology of space, this exhibition features significant new work that pushes his use of materials into exciting new territories. Kapoor has shown with Regen Projects since 1992 and this marks the artist’s fifth solo exhibition at the gallery.

A series of monumental works feature organic, terrestrial forms made from resin and earth.

On Saturday, January 31, 2015, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, will unveil its reinstalled collections of post-war and contemporary art. Featuring work from 1945 to the present, the collections will be housed in three dedicated galleries that have been newly renovated and refurbished over the past year.

The Wadsworth’s illustrious post-war and contemporary holdings will be divided between the Huntington Gallery, where mid-century abstract painting and sculpture by artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Tony Smith will be displayed; the Hilles Gallery, which will feature works by Robert Rauschenberg, Kara Walker, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, and Richard Tuttle; and the Colt building’s mezzanine gallery, where one of Sol LeWitt’s famed wall drawings will be on view as well as works by other minimalists and conceptualists.

Laumeier Sculpture Park in Saint Louis, Missouri, has successfully completed a $200,000 conservation project for Donald Judd’s “Untitled” (1984). The two-year project was funded by a $100,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), with a 1:1 match by Laumeier. According to the NEA’s website, Art Works grants are reserved for projects that “are likely to prove transformative with the potential for meaningful change, whether in the development or enhancement of new or existing art forms, new approaches to the creation or presentation of art, or new ways of engaging the public with art; are distinctive, offering fresh insights and new value for their fields and/or the public through unconventional solutions; and have the potential to be shared and/or emulated, or are likely to lead to other advances in the field.”

Judd, one of the most significant American artists of the post-war period, is often regarded as a Minimalist -- a classification he denounced based on its generality.

New York’s Gagosian Gallery is currently presenting an exhibition of sculptures and works on paper by the late American artist Walter De Maria. A pioneer of conceptual art, installation art, land art, and Minimalism, De Maria continuously pushed the boundaries of what contemporary art looked like and how it was displayed.

Last month, Gagosian Gallery announced that it had acquired De Maria’s estate and planned to establish the Walter De Maria Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to managing the artist’s rights and reproductions, advising on curatorial matters, and overseeing the preparation of a major monograph. Elizabeth Childress, former director of the De Maria studio, and current director of the Walter De Maria Collection and Archives, said, “Walter so wished to establish his own foundation, but sadly he did not accomplish this during his lifetime. It is an important step to have this entity as both a protection and a promotion of his legacy.”       

The estate of Walter De Maria, the reclusive US artist who died last year without leaving a will, is now represented by Gagosian Gallery (FL, C3; FM, C2). Best known for large-scale installations such as "The New York Earth Room," 1977, and "The Lightning Field," 1977, in New Mexico, De Maria had six solo shows with the gallery during his lifetime. Gagosian is due to mark the new relationship by staging an exhibition of Minimalist sculptures and works on paper that were created by the artist between 1976 and 1990.