Wall Drawing #398

Sol LeWitt

1983, drawn April 1985

Color ink wash

Dallas Museum of Art

Sol LeWitt, a seminal figure in the development of conceptualism in the 1960s, has consistently created work that explores the very meaning and underlying structure of art. His austere work—from his stark, white cube sculptures and spare wall drawings of graphite, white chalk, or black ink in a variety of configurations of the 1960s, to his wall drawings of recognizable geometric shapes drawn in a restricted palette of the early 1980s—is based on elaborations of elementary geometric systems and mathematical calculations. Although LeWitt's conceptual work is often considered cold, cerebral, and obsessively rational, it can be surpris