“Serial, minimal, orthogonal and architectural [the woodcuts] stand for beauty, clarity and enlightenment.”

—Jörg Schellman  

When Donald Judd first approached the medium of woodcut in 1953, he was initially apprehensive. The messy and physical carving process did not appeal to Judd, as he preferred not working with his hands or manual tools. He found solace in his discovery of birch, a hard wood that can be carved to create defined lines with sharp, clean edges. However, the carving of straight lines in all directions added another element of difficulty, due to the need to cut across the grain. As Judd lacked the tools and knowledge to create these lines, he turned to his father who was skilled in woodworking. In 1963, the father-son duo developed a collaboration for Judd’s first large-scale series of prints. This saw Judd directing the concept and his father, Roy Judd, taking on the physical labour, allowing the artist’s woodcuts to evolve into meticulously rendered rectilinear forms.

The present lot is defined by sharp boundaries, delineated by clean sections of black, white, and red that degment the work. Judd makes use of positive and negative space, using solid blocks of yellow ink and unprinted paper to build his composition. The result presents an experimental investigation into the possibilities of flat surfaces and the division of pictoral space. In his 1993 essay, “Some Aspects of Color in General and Red and Black in Particular,” Judd asserted “No immediate feeling can be attributed to color. Nothing can be identified…If there were an identifiable feeling to red or to black…[it] would not be useable to me. Color, like material, is what art is made from.” Untitled demonstrates colour as a vehicle for building art, placing emphasis on the formal elements rather than asserting emotion. Judd plays with the concept of space further through the addition of a dark red oil stripe applied on the glass. The frame becomes as much of the work as the paper, allowing the work to test the borders between print and object.