Above Image:  Sol LeWitt “Run I,” 1962  / Oil on canvas and wood, LeWitt Collection.
Courtesy Pace Gallery, New York/ at Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas.

Solomon “Sol” LeWitt (1928 – 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism. Grid pattern was central to LeWitt’s art. He used grid as a generative matrix for his artistic production over the span of nearly five decades, from 1960 until his death in 2007.

In my recent trip to Austin, Texas, I saw an exhibition “Converging Lines” on Sol Lewitt, at the Blanton Museum of Art. Two paintings particularly caught my attention. Run [1960] and Run I [1962]. In the painting Run in 1960, the grid pattern can be observed, but it is not developed fully. But in the 1962 painting, the grid structure was fully developed.

 

 

We can see the evolution of grid pattern in Lewitt’s paintings from “Run” [1960] in the above image, to “Run I” [1962] in the image below.

 

 

Run I is one of Lewitt’s first works to adopt the grid structure, a format that quickly became ubiquitous in his practice.  Here Lewitt uses painting to express the idea of running in three different forms of visual representation: depicting it literally with figures; as text in large stenciled words; and, graphically as arrows. Lewittt modeled the striding figure on the left side of the painting after the photograph of a running naked figure by the 19th century British photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s famous locomotion studies.

 

 

Lines in Four Directions – by Sol LeWitt
1985 / Painted aluminum / 90 X 72 feet
Location: 10 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago, IL 60604

 

 

Lines in Four Directions – by Sol LeWitt
1982 / gravel embedded directly into the space
Location: Outdoor installation at Museum of Contemporary Art [MCA], Chicago

 

 

Wall Drawing # 1111 [Circle with Broken Bands of Color] 2003
Temporary Exhibit: June 25 through September 19, 2010.
Location: Art Institute of Chicago – Modern Wing’s Griffin Court

 

 

Complex Form # 6 [1987] – by Sol Lewitt
Temporary Exhibit: 2013
Location: Navy Pier

 

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