Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries

Beacon, NY—Dia Art Foundation presents an exhibition of early wall drawings by Sol LeWitt at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, from September 16, 2006, through September 2010. “Drawing Series…,” a presentation of fourteen key works from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, comprises a selection of wall drawings, chosen, sequenced, and sited by the artist specifically for the galleries at Dia:Beacon.

In the late 1960s, LeWitt articulated a set of aesthetic principles through two key texts that would form the basis of his practice: Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967) and Sentences on Conceptual Art (1969). In 1969, he began to use these precepts as guidelines for two-dimensional works drawn directly on the wall. Now numbering over 1,200, the wall drawings occupy a central position in LeWitt’s distinguished career. LeWitt’s version of conceptual art began with an idea from which he developed a pre-set plan, set of instructions or rules which were then carried out in the most straightforward way possible. Nevertheless, many of the works in “Drawing Series. . .” display LeWitt’s readiness to capitalize on circumstance—on the quirks of a particular architectural situation, on the skills and inventiveness of his assistants, or on the different results produced by substituting one material for another. Light-toned and evenly applied, the lines create grids, patterns, and diagrams of varying tonality. LeWitt utilized such media as colored pencil, crayon, and chalk, as well as a variety of linear directives including: straight and wavy; even and uneven; touching and not touching; random and ordered; arcs and circles; and triangles and squares to incarnate the idea. Conceived via pre-set instructions and executed by teams of assistants, these wall drawings eliminate arbitrary, expressive, and subjective actions and eschew traces of hand or taste, yet each instantiation is unique and often unpredictable.

Seen in combination with other works by the artist at Dia:Beacon, “Drawing Series. . .” illuminates the scope and complexity of the artist’s vocabulary. A particular highlight of the exhibition is the monumental four-color rendering of Drawing Series—Composite, Part I–IV, #1–24, A+B (1969), realized for the first time for this exhibition. The graphite version of this work, on view in an adjacent gallery, is part of Dia’s permanent collection. The exhibition is also complemented by three of LeWitt’s later gouache wall drawings and an important early sculpture, 1 2 3: All Three-Part Variations on Three Different Kinds of Cubes (1967/2003).