Most importantly, the wall drawing genre has continued to be avital and engaging area of expression for LeWitt for more than twenty-five years. His early wall drawings were chaste and elusive inventions, drawn with sharp, thin, peneillines. During the past decade or so, LeWitt's wall drawings have grown to be impressive in their scale and exuberant in their color. Most are now usually drawn with rich, sensuous, fresco-like ink washes. LeWitt has taken the opportunity of the 23Ê Intemational Bienal of São Paulo to realize on agrand scale aset of images that have occurred in different ways in his work for near/y fifteen years. Wall Drawing #808, Stars with three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine points within bands of color ink washes superimposed (1996) is aseries of seven individual stars with from three to nine points. The initial stars are ali two meters in diameter and have been centered within seven black-bordered sections of wall space. Each star is surrounded by 30cm-wide concentric bands of colored ink washes. The broad range of colors in these wall drawings is achieved through a process of layering (rather than mixing) only four colors of ink: red, yellow, blue, and black diluted to grey. :rhis method of combining these colors has been used in ali of LeWitt's ink-wash wall drawings. LeWitt first used the star shape in a 1982 wall drawing that features apair of adjacent five-pointed stars drawn with India ink. LeWitt's stars have been, with a few notable, irregular exceptions, consistently defined by the geometry of aeircle. Each point of aLeWitt star rests on the eircumference of aeircle, inside which the star is constructed from the form of aregular polygon using conventional geometric formulae. The first wall drawing to feature asequence of stars, including the artist's eccentric three-pointed star, is LeWitt's 1983Wall Drawing #386. Like the São Paulo drawing, this work reflects the use of serialism, a strategy that LeWitt has explored fruitfully throughout his career. LeWitt elaborated upon the same idea with colored inks in Geneva, Switzerland, five months later in Wall Drawing #398. Over the years, LeWitt has experimented with the idea of the star in various colors and new configurations in gouaches, wall drawings, three-dimensional structures, prints, ceramics, even watch faces. ln 1991, LeWitt presented his first Star within bands of color ink washes superimposed. The apotheosis of these explorations is the bold and colorful Stars with three, four,Jive, six, seven, eight, and nine points within bands of color ink washes superimposed presented in São Paulo. The Wadsworth Atheneum has enjoyed alongstanding speeial relationship with Sol LeWitt. He was bom in Hartford in 1928 and attended art classes at the Atheneum as asmall boy. He graduatedfrom Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York in 1949 and served in the United States Armed Services in South Korea in 1951 and 1952. ln 1976 LeWitt made a
Maquettes for Wall Drawing #808, Stars with three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine poins ... within bands of color ink washes superimposed (1996) Criado paralCreated for the 23ª 8ienallnternacional de São Paulo Coleção do artistalArtíst's collectíon
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