Wednesday 30 September 2009 Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection

Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection is the first complete monograph of the artist, and includes a full survey of 50 of her sculptures and over 40 two-dimensional works made during the artist’s 40-year career, up to her death in 2004. It will be published by D Giles Limited, London in association with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in October 2009.

Anne Truitt, an artist based in Washington D.C. for most of her career, remains a largely under-recognized force in art post-1960, which has been dominated by Minimalist artists such as Donald Judd and Ellsworth Kelly. Part of this lack of recognition stems from the fact that Truitt pursued a staunchly independent course in her art: not only did she take a different path from the Color Field artists often associated with Washington, D.C., but she created reduced geometric abstraction that deviated from the approach of Minimalist artists in some significant ways. For example, her highly nuanced use of colour veered dramatically from primary hues, and the titles of many of her works evoked places and events that were important to her, suggesting a complex network of references beyond and yet somehow contained by the sculpture.

This volume accompanies an exhibition opening at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in October 2009, the first major retrospective exhibition of Anne Truitt’s work since 1974. At the heart of this volume are colour plates of the columnar sculptures that became the hallmark of Truitt’s profoundly focused practice, and that made her so significant to the development of minimal abstraction. Whilst Truitt’s work has featured as part of larger surveys of Minimalism, as well as in Truitt’s own artist’s journals – Daybook (1984), Turn (1987), and Prospect (1996) – it has never before been the subject of a complete monographic survey. Featuring essays by organizing curator Kristen Hileman and leading scholar James Meyer that interpret Truitt’s career and her place within the broader context of the American Abstraction, publication of Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection in 2009 will be a major event in itself, and one that will significantly increase our understanding of post-1960’s art.

Exhibition details: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden October 8 2009-January 3 2010

The Authors:
Kristen Hileman is associate curator, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where she recently curated The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image, Part II, Realisms (2008); James Meyer is Winship Distinguished Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University and the author of Minimalism: Art & Polemics in the Sixties (Yale, 2001) and Themes & Movements: Minimalism (Phaidon, 2000). He organized the Anne Truitt exhibition at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University in 2004. He also co-authored Howard Hodgkin with Nicholas Serota (Tate Britain 2006)

ANNE TRUITT: PERCEPTION AND REFLECTION

176 pages, 9 ½ x 11in. (280 x 240mm), portrait
150 colour and 12 b & w illustrations, hardcover plc with dust jacket
Text: Up to 40,000 words
ISBN: 978 1 904832 61 4 (13 digit)
ISBN: 1 904832 61 X (10 digit)

Price: US$55.00/UK£40.00
Publication date: October 2009
Publisher: D Giles Limited, London

Distributed in the UK and Rest of World (excluding US and Canada) by
Antique Collectors’ Club
Sandy Lane
Old Martlesham
Woodbridge
Suffolk
IP12 4SD
UK
T: +44 (0)1394 389950
F: +44 (0)1394 389999
Enquiries: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Distributed in the US and Canada by
Antique Collectors’ Club
ACC Distribution,
6 West 18th Street
Fourth Floor
New York, NY 1011
Toll-free orders: +1 800-252-5231
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

For Further Information and Review Copies:
In the UK contact: Liz Japes
20 Lockitt Way
Kingston
Lewes
East Sussex
BN7 3LG
Tel: +44 (0)1273 480225
E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

In the USA contact: Karen Lunstead, Marketing Manager
ACC Distribution,
6 West 18th Street
Fourth Floor
New York, NY 1011
Toll-free orders: +1 800-252-5231
E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)