Wall Drawing 462

On four walls, one room, arcs 4 inches (10 cm) wide, from the midpoints of four sides, drawn with alternating bands of gray and black ink wash (Detail: three walls).

January 1986

India ink wash

LeWitt Collection, Chester, Connecticut

First Installation
Galleria Studio G7, Bologna, Italy

First Drawn By
Sergio Cavazzini, Mauro Pitaccolo, Anthony Sansotta, Sergio Sarra

MASS MoCA Building 7
Ground Floor

Wall Drawing 462 is one of a series featuring ink wash arcs and circles in varying colors and orientations. This series represents one of the many in which Sol LeWitt applied a new medium to the themes first used in his pencil wall drawings. In the early 1970s the artist created a series of wall drawings presenting arcs, circles, and sometimes grids. As in these pencil drawings, the draftsmen drew the arcs in Wall Drawing 462 using a giant compass. The centers of the arcs, or the points from which the compass is rotated, are defined as the center of the wall and the midpoints of the sides of the walls, points that LeWitt repeatedly uses as part of his lexicon, along with the four corners of walls. By using these basic points on the wall as reference spots, the artist removed particular subjective decision-making from the structure and composition of many of his works.

In the original January 1986 installation of Wall Drawing 462 at Galleria Studio G7 in Bologna, Italy, the drawing was executed on four walls of a room with a vaulted ceiling. Unlike the three square-topped walls on which the drawing was executed at MASS MoCA, the scallop-topped walls highlighted the pattern of the arcs, creating the sense that the viewer is completely enveloped by the hypnotic gray and black bands.