Wall Drawing 419

The wall is bordered and divided horizontally and vertically into four equal parts with a 6-inch (15 cm) black ink band. Each quarter has alternating parallel 6-inch (15 cm) bands of white and color ink bands. Upper left: gray; upper right: yellow; lower left: red; lower right: blue.

September 1984

Color ink wash

LeWitt Collection, Chester, Connecticut

First Installation
Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris

First Drawn By
Takeshi Arita, David Higginbotham

MASS MoCA Building 7
Ground Floor

When Sol LeWitt began using ink wash for his wall drawings in the early ‘1980s, he frequently reiterated the systems that he had originated in pencil. For example, Wall Drawing 419 represents an adaptation of the artist’’s most basic presentation of colored pencil lines (an area divided into four equal parts, each part containing one of the four basic types of line which are executed in a specific color.) The grid structure eliminates compositional hierarchy: each type of line is given the same priority. Unlike the earlier pencil iterations, the lines in Wall Drawing 419 have been turned into wider bands, and the colors are much brighter in ink than in colored pencil. The four parts of the drawing are bordered with black bands, which further increase the boldness of the drawing.