Don Dudley (born 1930, Los Angeles) is an American artist who has worked on both the West Coast and East Coast of the United States.[1] His early work is associated with the Finish Fetish[1] school in California of the late 1960s as well as with New York Minimalism of the 1970s.[2] Dudley studied painting at the Chouinard Institute with Abstract Expressionist painter Richards Ruben.[3]
Ken JohnsonofThe New York Times 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 MondriantoBrice Marden mode. Mr. Dudley was in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1972 Annual (a precursor to the Whitney Biennial), devoted to contemporary American painting.”[4] Writing for East of Borneo (magazine), the critic Saul Ostrow 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."[8] Writing for Art in America, Sarah Schmerler compares Dudley's work to his peers such as Richard Artschwager, Jennifer Bartlett and Anthony Caro.[1] Recent exhibitions include exhibitions at Galerie Thomas Zander[9] in Cologne, Mendes Wood[7] in São Paulo, Magenta Plains[10] in New York City as well as Between Two Worlds: Art of California[11] at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco.
Dudley is represented by the New York City gallery Magenta Plains.[12]
