Wall Drawing 684A

Squares bordered and divided horizontally and vertically into four equal squares, each with bands in one of four directions.

June 1999

Color ink wash

Courtesy of the Estate of Sol LeWitt

First Installation
Galerie Franck + Schulte, Berlin

First Drawn By
Fransje Killaars, Roy Villevoye

MASS MoCA Building 7
Second Floor

Sol LeWitt’’s earliest wall drawings utilize lines in four directions (vertical, horizontal, diagonal left, and diagonal right) drawn in graphite sticks and sometimes yellow, red, and blue colored pencil. When LeWitt began using ink washes in 1983, he frequently reiterated these patterns of parallel lines, replacing the fine graphite marks with thicker, bolder bands of ink alternating with bands of white wall. Later LeWitt often eliminated the white spaces all together, filling all the bands with saturated color, as seen in Wall Drawing 684A.

As LeWitt did with the pencil drawings, he limited his ink palette to gray, yellow, red, and blue and frequently layered or superimposed the four colors. While the superimposed pencil creates very faint variations in hue, the ink layers produce a broad color palette of rich, gem-like colors. The artist quickly expanded his palette even further by experimenting with multiple layers of the same color. This layering technique is often compared to composing – the four basic colors are like notes that can be combined in many ways, resulting in a multitude of different melodies. Wall Drawing 684A demonstrates the range of hues that LeWitt’’s instructions can produce.