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Sol LeWitt

Wall Drawing

1971

Sol LeWitt created his first Wall Drawing for a 1968 exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and he continued to make them throughout his career. Wishing to construct a purely two-dimensional work, he conceived of Wall Drawing #89 as potentially covering any white wall in colors associated with the four-color printing process (red, yellow, blue, and black). Though laid down according to an exact formula, the work is mutable, allowing for the random variation of specific elements; each time it is installed, the overall size of the grid may vary, as well as the patterns and colors of the lines that the grid contains.

Sol LeWitt (b. 1928, Hartford, Connecticut; d. 2007, New York)
Wall Drawing #89, 1971
A six-inch grid covering the wall; within each square, non-straight lines in four directions: vertical black lines; horizontal yellow lines; diagonal right red lines; and diagonal left blue lines; as many lines as desired, but at least one line in each square
Dimensions variable
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of Kourosh Larizadeh

The artist conceives and plans the wall drawing. It is realized by draftsmen (the artist can act as his own draftsman); the plan (written, spoken, or drawn) is interpreted by the draftsman..... All wall drawings contain errors; they are part of the work. I wanted to do a work of art that was as two-dimensional as possible. It seems more natural to work directly on walls than to make a construction, to work on that, and then put the construction on the wall. —Sol LeWitt