Big Bend Texas Galleries & Artists 2019 | Page 12

Southwest Studio, La Mansana de Chinati/The Block, Marfa, TX; Image: Elizabeth Felicella/Esto © Judd Foundation. Donald Judd Art © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Licensed by ARS.
JUDD FOUNDATION
Preserving and Defending a Legacy
In the summer of 1946, the modern artist Donald Judd (1928-1994), then
eighteen years old, took a bus from Fort McLellan in Alabama to Los Angeles,
California. He had completed basic training for the United States Army and was on
his way to Korea where he would serve in the Army Corp of Engineers until November
of the following year. e bus passed through the town of Van Horn, Texas, 70 miles
west of Marfa on US-90. is was Judd’s first encounter with the American
Southwest, and he sent a telegram to his mother commenting on the beautiful
Cobb House, Marfa, TX, Image: Elizabeth Felicella/Esto © Judd Foundation. Licensed by ARS.
12 BIG BEND GALLERIES AND ARTISTS / 2019
mountains and landscape. Twenty-five years later, in 1971, the same expansive
landscape and open space drew Judd back to the Trans-Pecos region.
e artist had lived in New York City since 1954. It was there that he transitioned
from painting to three dimensional objects, and was included in his first group
exhibitions, and given his first retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of
American Art in 1968. He also purchased a five-story cast-iron building in SoHo where
he began to permanently install his own work and works he had collected.
Stifled by the art scene and lack of space for larger permanent installations, Judd
began to look at land elsewhere, eventually settling on Marfa. In 1973 and 1974, he
bought his first properties in town - an entire city block that included two former
WWI artillery hangers, and an old army quarter master’s house. He soon began to
install his work, create living and working spaces, and establish his 13,000-book
library.
Judd continued to purchase buildings in the center of town, preferring to restore
preexisting structures rather than demolish them. He converted the former Marfa
National Bank into his architecture studio, an old Safeway Grocery Store into an art
studio, and a former Rancher’s home into a painting gallery.
As early as 1977, Judd established his ideas for the Judd Foundation: “e purpose
of the foundation is to preserve my work and that of others and to preserve this work
in spaces I consider appropriate for it…I have to defend what I’ve done; it is urgent
and necessary to make my work last in the first condition.”
Today, the Judd Foundation preserves sixteen properties in both Texas and New
York. ey include the artist’s homes and studios in Marfa, a historic cast-iron