Dark Red, Blue, Green Domes (small), 1968

Acrylic spray lacquer on acrylic, with glass-and-plexiglass base
© 2022 Judy Chicago / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Ian Reeves.

A foundational figure in the first generation of American feminist artists, Judy Chicago moved in 1957 to Los Angeles, where she enrolled at UCLA. She began her career as part of the Finish Fetish group, which was associated with the influential Ferus Gallery and included Craig Kauffman (1932–2010) and Billy Al Bengston (1934–2022), among others. Dark Red, Blue, Green Domes (small) belongs to a group of sculptures comprising hemispheres, or “domes,” that Chicago made during her Minimalist period, between 1968 and 1971. Chicago here offers her own distinctive take on the Finish Fetish aesthetic, incorporating her own embodied experience as a woman into the sculptures' geometric forms, gradated hues, and slick, reflective finish. Speaking of the importance of her Los Angeles context, Chicago said, “My formal language, my color language, my approach to art-making, I built it here.”