Sol Lewitt Bands of Color

Sol LeWitt is a systematic artist, creating a set of rules for a work and then following them to their conclusion. Using classical geometric components, such as cubes, squares, triangles, and circles, he is able to create an almost mystical expressivity with minimal means, resulting in art of great sensuous beauty. One-, Two-, Three-, and Four-Part Combinations of Vertical, Horizontal, and Diagonal, Left and Right Bands of Color (1993-94), a suite of sixty-four gouaches, is composed of stripes of equal thickness in diluted primary colors to fill the area of each sheet. The artist established the components -- vertical, horizontal, and diagonal -- in the first group of four, and varied them to remarkable effect in the sheets that followed. LeWitt's art invites not only an appreciation of the beauty of the completed work, but also an understanding of the intellectual demands the work makes.