Don Dudley (born 1930,

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

) is an American artist who has worked on both the West Coast and East Coast of the United States. His early work is associated with the

Finish Fetish Finish Fetish denotes a style of art related to the LA Look, pop art, minimalism, and light and space originating in southern California in the 1960s. Artwork of this type often has a glossy and slick finish and features an abstract design on a two ...

school in California of the late 1960s as well as with New York

Minimalism In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

of the 1970s. Dudley studied painting at the Chouinard Institute with

Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

painter Richards Ruben. Dudley relocated from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in the early 1970s where he exhibited widely at venues such as the

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sc ...

, the

Queens Museum The Queens Museum, formerly the Queens Museum of Art, is an art museum and educational center located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States. The museum was founded in 1972, and has among its pe ...

, the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

as well as the

List Visual Arts Center Established in 1950, the List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is the contemporary art museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for temporary exhibitions in its galleries located in the MIT Media Lab building, as well as its admini ...

at M.I.T.

Career

Ken Johnson of

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

writes, “Mr. Dudley, 80, was an active player in the turn to hedonistic simplicity in painting in the late 1960s and early ’70s, first as a Finish Fetishist on the West Coast and then, after moving to New York in the early ’70s, in the Mondrian to

Brice Marden Brice Marden (born October 15, 1938) is an American artist generally described as Minimalist, although his work may be hard to categorize. He lives and works in New York City; Tivoli, New York; Hydra, Greece; and Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania. Life ...

mode. Mr. Dudley was in the

’s 1972 Annual (a precursor to the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

), devoted to contemporary American painting.” Writing for

East of Borneo (magazine) ''East of Borneo'' is an online art publication which documents contemporary art and its history as considered from Los Angeles. Partially funded and supported by the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts, it was founded in 2010 b ...

, the critic

Saul Ostrow Saul Ostrow is an American art critic and art curator. In 1972 Ostrow received his MFA in art from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has taught at Pratt Institute, Cleveland Institute of Art, Syracuse University, Parsons The New School ...

provides another description of Dudley's work, which is notable in its use of metallic and fluorescent paints developed for use in home decoration: "Dudley’s works appear at first to be monochromes, but they really aren’t. The colors range from a decoratively appealing palette of whites, to saturated yellows and violet and blue metallic (metal flack-looking) pigments. Liminal shifts of color and tone produce noticeably different spatial and perceptual effects." Writing for

Art in America ''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It i ...

, Sarah Schmerler compares Dudley's work to his peers such as

Richard Artschwager Richard Ernst Artschwager (December 26, 1923 – February 9, 2013) was an American painter, illustrator and sculptor. His work has associations with Pop Art, Conceptual art and Minimalism. Early life and art Richard Artschwager was born to Europe ...

Jennifer Bartlett Jennifer Bartlett ( Losch; March 14, 1941 – July 25, 2022) was an American artist. She was known for paintings and prints that combine the system-based aesthetic of conceptual art with the painterly approach of Neo-Expressionism. Many of her ...

and

Anthony Caro Sir Anthony Alfred Caro (8 March 192423 October 2013) was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using ' found' industrial objects. His style was of the modernist school, having worked with Henry Moor ...

. Recent exhibitions include exhibitions at Galerie Thomas Zander in Cologne, Mendes Wood in São Paulo, Magenta Plains in New York City as well as Between Two Worlds: Art of California at the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

in San Francisco. Dudley is represented by the New York City gallery Magenta Plains.

Collections

, New York, NY *

Albright–Knox Art Gallery The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...

, Buffalo, NY * Oceanside Art Museum, Oceanside, CA *

Chase Manhattan Bank JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase Bank or often as Chase, is an American national bank headquartered in New York City, that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of the U.S. multinational banking and fina ...

, New York City

Personal life

Don Dudley lives and works in

and

Kerhonkson Kerhonkson is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Ulster County, New York, United States. The population was 1,684 at the 2010 census. The Kerhonkson CDP is an urban concentration that straddles the border of the town of Rochester and ...

, NY and is married to artist Shirley Irons.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dudley, Don 1930 births Living people 21st-century American painters California Institute of the Arts alumni Minimalism Minimalist artists Painters from Los Angeles