ARTIST ROOMS: Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1136  2004

Wall Drawing #1136 is a colourful and lively acrylic paint installation by the American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, and an example of the artist’s long-term commitment to wall drawing as a central component of his artistic practice. The work is composed of both curved and straight solid bands of colour that are painted directly onto the surface of a wall using every primary (red, yellow, blue) and secondary (green, orange, purple) colour plus grey. The curve, made up of nine interlocking bands in these seven colours (there are two bands each of red and green), snakes along the wall, touching the top and bottom of the wall at various points. The same seven colours reappear, in an irregular sequence, as vertical bands that serve as a background pattern for the curve. Every band in the wall drawing is of the same width and there is no area left empty of colour. With the exception of his very first wall drawing exhibited at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York in 1968, the artist did not execute the wall drawings himself; rather, he employed draughtsmen or assistants to carry out specific instructions to copy and enlarge his diagram of the drawing to the wall itself.