September 7 – October 5, 2024
Sol Lewitt: Early Drawings (1968-1975), Related Structures, and Prints
Krakow Witkin Gallery
In Person Viewing:
10 Newbury Street
Boston, MA 02116
Online Viewing:
https://www.krakowwitkingallery.com/exhibition/sol-lewitt-drawings-prints-and-related-structures-1967-1979/
Today, Sol LeWitt is equally known for his two- and three-dimensional works, but in the late 1940s, through about 1960, the artist focused on painting as well as drawing, and printmaking. By the mid-1960s, his paintings had transitioned through deeply impastoed paint, to paint on dimensional supports, to a focus on fully three-dimensional form. With this new-found focus, LeWitt began engaging skilled craftspeople to assist in the construction of his pieces (he called the works, “structures”). In order to communicate what he wanted, he drew fabrication diagrams using simple perspectival lines. Horizontal, vertical, and diagonal (in two directions) lines served LeWitt’s purpose of communication. Shortly after he started using this sort of diagram, he also began exploring drawing with these same four directions of lines (first on paper, then on walls) but now as the imagery with no external referents. With some time, he came to call this simplified imagery, “Lines in Four Directions.” The current exhibition focuses on early works made between 1968 and 1979 that speak to his exploration of “Lines in Four Directions” and that imagery’s relationship to concurrently-made three-dimensional works.
