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Dia Art Foundation Acquires Six Works by Anne Truitt

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 2, 2017

Dia Art Foundation Acquires Six Works by Anne Truitt

New Long-Term Gallery to Open at Dia:Beacon on May 5, 2017

New York – Dia Art Foundation announced today that it has acquired five sculptures and one painting by Anne Truitt. This acquisition expands Dia’s collection of Minimal and Postminimal art, reiterating its commitment to collecting artists of the 1960s and 1970s. It joins Dia’s recent addition of works by Carl Andre, Jo Baer, Joan Jonas, and Robert Morris.

Truitt’s first one-person show of monolithic geometric works at André Emmerich Gallery in New York in 1963 was one of the earliest exhibitions of Minimalist sculpture. She was soon included in canonical Minimalist exhibitions, such as Black, White and Grey at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1964, and Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1966. However, her bold and intuitive use of hand-applied color and allusive subject matter set her practice apart from the literalist aesthetic of artists like Donald Judd and Morris. Allowing audiences to assess her unique position within the field of historical Minimalism, Dia will open a new long term gallery of Truitt’s work at Dia:Beacon in Beacon, New York, on May 5, 2017.

“Dia’s great strength is its commitment to artists who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, collecting them in depth and showing their work in long-term, single-artist installations. We are honored to unveil a new gallery devoted to Anne Truitt in May 2017 at Dia:Beacon,” said Jessica Morgan, Director, Dia Art Foundation. “Together this group of works demonstrate the breadth and scope of Truitt’s artistic development, and importantly this acquisition helps to further expand Dia’s representation of women who made significant contributions to the remarkable artistic experimentation during this period.”

This newly acquired group of works represents how Truitt’s practice introduced the serial syntax and bodily scale of Minimalism. White: One (1962), a tall, thin column that rests on a simple wooden base, is the first in a series of white works of increasing number that allude to the artist’s hometown in Easton, Maryland, and introduce the singular column as a recurring form within her art. Both Pith (1969) and Landfall (1970) are exemplary instances of her investigations of columnar shape. A second iconic early work, North (1963), is an imposing wall painted in varying shades of deep, dark greens, reflecting Truitt’s concurrent interest in architecture and lateral expansion.

Throughout the 1970s, Truitt turned to increasingly soft colors, including pastels stereotypically gendered as feminine, in a provocative rejection of the sober hues of her early work and many of her Minimalist peers. For example, lush peaches and mauves adorn Grant (1974), one of only four large, horizontal, floor-based objects that Truitt produced. Another example, Echo (1973), consists of an enveloping field of pinks. With a width of twelve feet, Echo is the largest painting that Truitt ever made. In addition to the newly acquired group of works, Dia will present a selection of paintings from Truitt’s Arundel series, completed during the 1970s, on long-term loan from the artist’s estate. Together, the five sculptures and paintings trace the evolution of Truitt’s art from her earliest experiments with geometric shape to her increasingly spatial deployment of form and color in horizontal and vertical formats.

Dia Art Foundation

Founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is committed to initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving extraordinary art projects. Dia:Beacon opened in May 2003 in Beacon, New York. Dia also maintains several long-term sites, including Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, which was inaugurated at Documenta 7 in 1982), and Dan Flavin’s untitled (1996), all of which are located in New York City; the Dan Flavin Art Institute (established in 1983) in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) in western New Mexico; Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in Great Salt Lake, Utah; and De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany.

Dia presents temporary exhibitions and installations, performances, lectures, and readings on West 22nd Street in New York City

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For additional information or materials contact:
Press Department, Dia Art Foundation, press@diaart.org or 212 293 5518

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