The Met Announces Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #370: Ten Geometric Figures (including right triangle, cross, X, diamond) with three-inch parallel bands of lines in two directions (1982). Photo: courtesy of the estate of Sol LeWitt/the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is installing one of Sol LeWitt’s famous wall drawings in its galleries this summer. The 1982 work, Wall Drawing #370: Ten Geometric Figures (including right triangle, cross, X, diamond) with three-inch parallel bands of lines in two directions, will take four weeks and a team of five drafters to complete.

The black-and-white, linear drawing of geometric shapes will be located in gallery 399 on the first floor of the Met’s Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, which will soon undergo a significant renovation and redesign (see artnet News report).

Accompanying the wall drawing will be a suite of five silkscreen works by the artist titled Composite Series (1970). The linear works are among LeWitt’s earliest abstract prints, and were based on his ink drawings and wall drawing plans. Each square-shaped piece features a series of straight lines, crisscrossing the page at 90 and 45 degree angles in different colored square and rectangular segments. As the series progresses, LeWitt introduces more and more subdivisions to the page, culminating in a single block featuring all possible line and color combinations.

LeWitt made his first wall drawing in 1968. From the first, these works, which were executed by drafters in a variety of different media and architectural settings, were meant to be impermanent, and many have since been lost. Likewise, the Met’s latest LeWitt is only a temporary installation. The drawing, which will be finished June 30, will be painted over on September 7, 2015.


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