Donald Judd was born June 3, 1928, in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. After a year in the Army in Korea, he attended the Art Students League in New York (1947-53), the College of William and Mary (1948-49) and Columbia University. The Panoramas Gallery organised his first solo exhibition in 1957.

From 1959-1965, his writings in several major art periodicals exercised considerable influence on the avant-garde movement. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organised the first retrospective of his work in 1968.

In 1971 he moved to Marfa, Presidio County, Texas where in 1986 he opened the Chinati Foundation which today features permanent installations by Judd and others. He participated in his first Venice Biennale (1980), and in Documenta, Kassel (1982). Major retrospectives of Judd's work have been organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1988-1989) and the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, which traveled to Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf ; Musée d'Art Moderne del la Ville de Paris; and Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (1987-88). The artist died in February 1994, in New York. Recently a major solo exhibition was organised by the Tate Modern, London (2004).