Ravenna's MAR exhibits after more than 30 years monumental work by Sol LeWitt

On the occasion of the rearrangement of the permanent collections, Sol LeWitt’s major work Wall Drawing #570 returns to the Ravenna City Art Museum after more than thirty years. A work of monumental dimensions since it measures over twelve meters by almost three. This had been created for the group show held at the Ravenna museum venue, Journey to Italy, and has been in the museum’s storerooms since 1988.

Among the leading exponents ofconceptual art, Sol LeWitt experimented in 1968 with wall drawings, or large-scale wall paintings, with which he revolutionized the relationship between art, space and architecture. In the late 1960s, in New York, the artist’s research focused on painting and the need to find an essential language. Fascinated by the great masters of the 15th century and the execution of frescoes, he experiments with the use of the wall, challenging two-dimensionality and trying to maintain an integrity of the pictorial plane.

The artist transposes the drawing from the paper to the wall, which becomes an integral part of his work and in which each element is essential and functional to the total composition. Wall Drawing #570 is part of the Complex forms cycle of the late 1980s, in which isometric volumes are represented in sequence and thus figures are maintained unchanged in all their measurable modulations. Made of seven wooden panels plastered and colored by inks and mixtures, the work spanned almost the entire area of the exhibition wall in 1988. Although it does not occupy the entire wall, it is re-presented here today in its entirety.

“It is a great satisfaction to be able to remount a Sol LeWitt work of this magnitude today,” said conservator Giorgia Salerno. “This is a valuable historical recovery on which I have been working for quite some time and which, together with the overall project of remounting the permanent collections, aims to redefine the identity, including the international one, of the Art Museum of the city of Ravenna, through its own heritage, which is decisive for understanding the cultural context of the city. The MAR, with this fundamental reappropriation, thus joins the most important international cultural institutions that hold the works of the father of conceptual art Sol LeWitt.”

The work will be on public view starting April 13, during the unveiling of the refurbishment of the permanent museum collections.

Image: Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #570 (1988; 2.95 x 12.25 m). Photo by Marco Parollo

Ravenna's MAR exhibits after more than 30 years monumental work by Sol LeWitt

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