Donald Judd Untitled (89-18 Lascaux), 1989

Donald Judd’s oeuvre is characterised by a complex articulation of space and rigorous experimentation with colour. In the artist’s words: ‘Material, space, and colour are the main aspects of visual art. Everyone knows that there is material [...] but no one sees space and colour.’ Untitled (89-18 Lascaux) (1989) is an example of Judd’s multicoloured works, a series which he undertook in the last decade of his life, after his discovery, in 1984, of an industrial process that enabled him to enamel thin sheets of bent aluminium prompted him to fundamentally revise his approach to colour. The use of pared-back, geometrical shapes allows the colours Judd selected – pure, unmixed, and sourced from the RAL colour standard chart – to come forth unequivocally.