Floor 5: Sol LeWitt (exiting City Gallery)
Overview
Gallery Wayfinding
You are in the Sol LeWitt Gallery. The dominant piece in the room is Sol LeWitt's massive, bright yellow, Wall Drawing 280, which covers an entire free‑standing vertical wall in the center of the space.
You've entered the long, rectangular gallery from the back wall, facing the free-standing vertical wall in the center. The title text for this gallery is on the wall to your right. The gallery itself is divided into two equal spaces by the free-standing vertical wall in the center, with wide openings at both ends of the wall.
The back gallery space, which is where you are now, has four 2-D works along the walls, two wall reliefs that protrude from the walls, and one sculpture in the center, which rests on a low rectangular platform on the floor. There is a bench in the center of the back gallery space and slightly toward the left side.
The front gallery space has two 2-D works along the left and front walls, and three sculptures along the freestanding wall. Two of the sculptures along this freestanding wall rest on a wide and low rectangular platform that spreads across the floor.
The exit to the Ellsworth Kelly Curves Gallery is in the back right corner. The QR code is at the threshold on the right wall, marked with a perpendicular tactile floor strip.
Note to visitors: If this is the beginning of your journey on the 5th Floor, you might be starting halfway through the exhibition. To find the start of the exhibition, turn around and walk to your left down to the end of the City Gallery. The 5th Floor Tactile Map is on the wall across from the elevators.
Label
"I did not invent the cube, pyramid, or any other geometric figure.
(My art is not about inventing forms, but using them as building blocks.)"
—Sol LeWitt, 2007
Using straightforward lines, squares, and cubes as his basic elements, Sol LeWitt (born 1928, Hartford; died 2007, New York) created rigorously systematic works of art that are often visually surprising and arresting. LeWitt devised rule-based systems that yielded multiple variations of repeating geometric forms, sometimes pushing the work’s internal logic to the edge of irrationality. Over the course of his career, he made drawings, prints, photographs, artist’s books, and sculptural works he called "structures." Each medium offered a distinct set of opportunities to put a concept in motion and let it run its course.
LeWitt argued that the idea behind a work could itself qualify as art, distinct from the act of executing it. His wall drawings, six of which are on view in these galleries—from his very first, devised in 1968, to one of his last, from 2008—demonstrate this approach. After every exhibition these works are painted over, yet each one continues to exist as an idea and a set of instructions to be carried out again and again in different locations by trained assistants. Depending on the hand of the draftsperson and the conditions of the installation space, it will change slightly each time it is re-installed.
The wall drawings on view in the next several galleries were installed in 2026 by Yuka Ezoe, Lacey Fekishazy, Sarah Heinemann, Clifford Hengst, Jen Hitchings, Gabriel Hurier, Evangeline Neuhart, Mitzi Pederson, Kate Rhoades, Emily Rose Rudnick, Michael Benjamin Vedder, Arthur Wechsler, and Jean Pettigrew Whelan.
Family Label
Sol LeWitt loved working with simple lines and shapes. He wrote many instructions for making drawings, like a composer writes music. For him, the instructions were the art! It was up to other people to follow his "sheet music." These drawings were made by trained artists following the rules LeWitt made during his life.
Related Media
Artwork Label Text
Sol LeWitt on conceptual art.
SFMOMA interview (1999); re-edited 2022
Single-channel video, with sound, 4:29 min
Transcript
Sol LeWitt:
Conceptual art. It's an art that is basically based on ideas: the idea, the concept, would drive the work. Once the idea was presented, then the work would be done.
I started going to Italy in the 70s and being close to the large-scale frescoes that were all around. It made it seem that it was a natural way of making art. And once you start on the idea of the wall, then it becomes the whole wall.
I started to do things with pencil and went to, gradually, to crayon. As the walls became larger and the spaces larger, it was a natural kind of medium to use to cover large areas in a fast way. And then gradually I started to use color.
The idea is that the color theory and printing theory is that you just use the primary colors and, from those primary colors, all the other colors could come out of them.
The Abstract Expressionists would make large, very large paintings, but they were still like easel paintings done large, instead of using the wall, or the room, or the building, as a focal point for making art.
When I do a wall piece, I don't go and do it with a brush. I do it as a plan, as a drawing, and then other people can read the plan and do it. The underpinning, theoretically, could be said that: to separate the idea of art from the idea of craft—not that craft is a lower or less exalted activity, but there is a difference, and it’s a historic difference.
Parallel of other arts, architecture or music, whereby the composer doesn't play all the instruments or any of them, and the architect doesn't build the building. You think all the ideas are good but some of them crash, and you don't know until you do it. You pick up a bad idea, then you discard it and figure out a different way of doing it. It may turn out good again.
Sometimes, you do something that jars you out of your present thinking and sets you off in a different direction, just by doing something with a different medium or a different space. People tend also to keep doing what's comfortable to do, and you need some kind of outside shock to set you off in a different direction.
To me, art is a means of transmitting my ideas to someone else through that medium, which is what we call art.
Label
Sol LeWitt loved working with simple lines and shapes. He wrote many instructions for making drawings, like a composer writes music. For him, the instructions were the art! It was up to other people to follow his "sheet music." These drawings were made by trained artists following the rules LeWitt made during his life.
Objects
13 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Artwork Label Text
1996
Paint and wood
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1996
Visual Description
A white-painted, irregularly stepped wooden pyramid built entirely from repeated small, open-cube modules with uniform, square-edged frames that form a lattice-like grid. The work, which is presented on a pedestal, is over two feet tall and extends to over four-and-a-half feet on its longer side—slightly shorter than an average adult's outstretched arms. The work is uniformly painted a matte white, while shadows collect inside the cube openings and deepen toward the center, creating a gradient of light and dark through the receding grid. The overall silhouette is symmetrical and defined, with the stepped sides creating diagonal profiles from base to summit.
It is symmetrical along both its short and long axes. At both ends of the long axis, it begins with a single open cube at the base. The next row is composed of four cubes, with the two lower cubes centered on the first one, and the following row is composed of nine cubes, likewise centered on the previous one. The number of cubes continues to increase in this manner as a sequence of perfect squares (1×1=1; 2×2=4; 3×3=4; 4×4 = 16) until the stepping and horizontally expanding cubes reach a single central wall that is twelve cubes high and twelve cubes wide. The total number of rows, including the central, highest one, is thirty-two.
When looked at from either of its longer ends, the structure appears to expand upward, beginning at one cube at the base and ending at twelve cubes at the top. But when seen from the other two sides, it appears as a more typical stepped pyramid that ascends from a base of thirty-two cubes to one cube at the top—but one that that gradually bulges outward toward the center as the depth of each row increases by half a cube.
Artwork Label Text
1963
Oil on canvas and painted wood
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2004
Wall Structure was the first piece LeWitt made using seriality—a logical, predetermined system of progression. Here, each square pushes out farther from, and is nested more tightly within, the one that contains it. He wrote of this pivotal work: “Wall Structure is important to me and crucial to my thinking. . . . It represents the change from art being an object-in-itself to a narrative piece. (From form to content.)” LeWitt considered serial art narrative because it invites the viewer to read each part sequentially, over time, in order to understand the underlying system.
Visual Description
A large wall relief of nested and progressively-protruding squares—almost as tall as a short adult and about as wide as their outstretched arms—rotated ninety degrees to form a three-dimensional diamond shape. The background of the piece is a matte black square bordered by a thin white edge, with subtle surface ripples. In the center of that field is a large, painted white square that has been rotated, so its points are nearly touching the center of each edge of the black square background.
Within that white square are five concentric or nested hollow wood square shapes that protrude from the canvas, also rotated ninety degrees to form diamonds, their depths gradually progressing toward the center so the innermost diamond protrudes from the ground the farthest—about two feet from the wall. These diamonds are painted white on all sides except for the top edge, which is painted black.
Viewed from the front, the depth of each diamond is not apparent, and so the piece seems to resemble concentric black diamond lines on a white diamond background. When viewed from the side, the diamond shapes of varying depths appear three-dimensional and tiered, like a series of nested frames or boxes stacked inward, with shadows deepening as the forms tighten and grow longer toward the center. In the center of the piece, deep within the tallest diamond, there is a painted thin black outline of a diamond shape.
Artwork Label Text
January 1976
First drawn by: Diane Bertolo, Linda Brooks, Charles Clough, Alan Hayes, Gary Judkins, Pierce Kamke, Robert Longo, Kevin Noble, Joseph Panone, Robert Reslawsky, Cindy Sherman, and Michael Zwack
First installation: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo
Graphite, crayon, and acrylic paint on wall
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1990
Visual Description
A large gallery wall the size of a movie theater screen is uniformly painted a vivid yellow and overlaid with a regular grid in thin pencil lines. Dozens of thicker straight lines in red, green, and white crayon extend from multiple anchoring points: the center of the wall, the corners of the wall, and the midpoints of the top, bottom, and side edges of the wall. As a result, several bursts form at these spots, creating denser radiations of lines that dissipate elsewhere on the wall as the various lines come to a stop at different points on the grid. At the center point of the wall, the white chalk lines—more subtle from a distance than the blue and red lines— form an intense radiating spoke.
Artwork Label Text
1979
Painted brass
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1988
Wall Structure was the first piece LeWitt made using seriality—a logical, predetermined system of progression. Here, each square pushes out farther from, and is nested more tightly within, the one that contains it. He wrote of this pivotal work: “Wall Structure is important to me and crucial to my thinking. . . . It represents the change from art being an object-in-itself to a narrative piece. (From form to content.)” LeWitt considered serial art narrative because it invites the viewer to read each part sequentially, over time, in order to understand the underlying system.
Visual Description
Five shallow-relief, window-like, open-square units painted white brass are set directly on the museum wall within a pencil-drawn square that is three feet long by three feet wide, or about the size of an average wall poster.
On the upper left is a small single-compartment open square. To its right is a larger square subdivided into four smaller squares (a 2×2 grid). Each of the smaller squares is equal in size to the square in the first unit. To the right of this, at the upper right corner of the composition, is the largest element: a square divided into nine smaller squares of the same dimensions (a 3×3 grid). Below this, at mid-right, another 2×2 grid square echoes the upper-center form. Finally, at the lower right, a small single-compartment square repeats the simplest motif. The rest of the area within the pencil-drawn outline is empty.
Each of the units is traced in pencil on the wall, both on the outside—around its outer edges—and the inside—within each sub-square.
Artwork Label Text
1998
Gelatin silver prints, ed. 2/9
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1998
Visual Description
A series of twelve square-format black-and-white photographs, each slightly larger than a standard piece of paper, is arranged in a single horizontal row on the wall. Each photo captures the same solid white cube—dramatically lit and presented against a flat black background—from progressively closer up, so that with each photo the shape increases in size and occupies more of the frame. In the first image, the cube appears very small and centered in an otherwise stark black field.
By the final images, the cube has expanded beyond the edges of the frame; the last image shows a close-up of a single corner where three of the cube's edges meet. The cube is consistently positioned and lit in all twelve photos, with three crisply defined planes (the top and two sides) that have three distinct shades: white (to the right), gray (at the top), and dark gray (to the left). The solid black background offers no horizon line or other clues as to the space the cube occupies.
Artwork Label Text
January 2002
First drawn by: Sachiko Cho and Irene Stevens
First Installation: Gap Inc. headquarters, San Francisco
Colored pencil on wall
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2001
Visual Description
A drawing made of thin lines of colored pencil set directly on the white wall of the gallery is organized into two side-by-side square grids. Each square grid is four feet tall and wide, which is about the height size of a large wall poster, but wider. Each of the large squares is subdivided into four smaller squares that are separated by thin margins of empty white wall, and each of these smaller squares is in turn subdivided into a matrix of four still smaller squares, creating a checkerboard structure whose edges remain slightly visible. The resulting thirty-two squares that make up the drawing contain various combinations of straight lines running in four directions—horizontally, vertically, diagonally up, and diagonally down. Some squares contain just one of these line varieties, and some feature two, three, or all four kinds of line.
Within the drawing, four different colors of pencil—black, yellow, red, and blue—are used, and each is associated with one of the four varieties of straight line: vertical lines are black, horizontal lines are yellow, upward diagonals are red, and downward diagonals are blue. As a result, the combinations of the different lines in the various squares of the grids not only produce different textures and tonalities, but also different color blends. The grid to the right has a large yellow central area, red corner blocks, blue blocks on our left and right middle areas, and gray blocks in the top and bottom middle areas. The general pattern is repeated in the grid to the right grid, but with different colors: a more muted yellow central area (made of yellow horizontal and black vertical lines combined) is surrounded by an corner blocks of an orange hue (combinations of yellow, red, and black); left and right middle areas in a brownish hue (combinations of all four colors); and top and bottom middle areas of gray (black lines only).
Artwork Label Text
October 1968
First drawn by: Sol LeWitt
First installation: Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Graphite on wall
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1992
Family Label: A shocking drawing!
This is Sol LeWitt’s first-ever wall drawing—and it shocked people back in 1968! Instead of being drawn on paper, it is drawn directly on the wall, and painted over when the show that it’s part of ends.
Do you find that shocking? Why or why not?
Visual Description
A grey-toned drawing made of thin graphite lines set directly on the white wall of the gallery is organized into two side-by-side square grids. Each square grid is four feet tall and wide, which is about the height size of a large wall poster, but wider. Each of these large squares is subdivided into four smaller squares that are separated by thin margins of empty white wall, and each of these smaller squares is in turn subdivided into a matrix of four still smaller squares, creating a checkerboard structure whose edges remain slightly visible. The resulting thirty-two squares that make up the drawing contain various combinations of straight lines running in four directions—horizontally, vertically, diagonally up, and diagonally down. Some squares contain just one of these line varieties, and some feature two, three, or all four kinds of line.
The different combinations result in different densities of line that read as lighter or darker shades of gray from a distance. The left grid appears lighter overall, as each square consists of only one type of the four lines, although the different directions of the lines create different textures. The right grid is more varied in contrast: several squares, especially toward the outer columns in the center rows of the square, contain all four types of line crisscrossing to form a denser, darker texture. Although the selection of line types and their combinations is different in the two grids, they have an identical symmetrical pattern, with their two upper matrices and two lower matrices forming mirror images of one another.
Artwork Label Text
March 1986
First drawn by: David Higginbotham and Tony Tasset
First installation: Refco Inc., Chicago
Ink wash
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1992
During the 1980s, LeWitt began to create wall drawings that feature pyramids and other geometric figures built up from layers of colored ink washes. With its rich matte surfaces and flattened volumes, Wall Drawing #477 reflects the influence of the early Renaissance fresco paintings that surrounded him following his move to Spoleto, Italy, in 1980. LeWitt stayed true to his rule-based system, however: The subtle hues are achieved by superimposing layers of primary colors (yellow, red, blue) and gray in different combinations, as the artist diagrammed in the nearby watercolor.
Family Label: Different every time
Five triangles float on a sky-blue background. Sol LeWitt wrote the rules for this wall drawing, and other artists followed them to make it. The drawing can be made big or small to fit the size of the wall. It looks a little different every time!
Visual Description
Spanning over half the length of the gallery—about the size of a movie theater screen—this wide, horizontal-format wall drawing presents a multicolored irregular pyramid floating in a sky-blue ground. The drawing is made of layers of color ink wash that result in a textured surface with rich, vibrant tones. From a single apex near the upper-right area, five long, flat, triangular planes radiate outward, each wedge filled with a different color. There are no visible lines between the different color areas. The work extends from floor to ceiling and is bounded on the right side by the corner of the room and on the left side by the edge of a doorway and a groove in the header above the doorway.
Starting from the leftmost wedge and moving right, the colors progress from deep violet-purple to saturated green, then a warm orange-red, followed by a dark, earthy brown, and a deep violet-purple wedge on the far right. The outer edges of the wedges create an irregular polygonal silhouette, with the shape spreading broadly toward the left and lower edges, while the converging point at the top remains sharply defined. The only line that is level is the bottom of the orange triangle, which runs parallel to the floor, two or so feet above it; otherwise, every edge of the pyramid is at an angle.
Artwork Label Text
1986
Graphite and watercolor on paper
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1992
During the 1980s, LeWitt began to create wall drawings that feature pyramids and other geometric figures built up from layers of colored ink washes. With its rich matte surfaces and flattened volumes, Wall Drawing #477 reflects the influence of the early Renaissance fresco paintings that surrounded him following his move to Spoleto, Italy, in 1980. LeWitt stayed true to his rule-based system, however: The subtle hues are achieved by superimposing layers of primary colors (yellow, red, blue) and gray in different combinations, as the artist diagrammed in the nearby watercolor.
Family Label: Different every time
Five triangles float on a sky-blue background. Sol LeWitt wrote the rules for this wall drawing, and other artists followed them to make it. The drawing can be made big or small to fit the size of the wall. It looks a little different every time!
Visual Description
This small, graphite-and-watercolor drawing on paper—about the size of a standard piece of paper—depicts a multicolored, irregular pyramid on a sky-blue ground. Serving as a study for Wall Drawing #477 on the adjacent wall, five long, flat, triangular planes radiate outward from a single apex near the upper-right area, each filled with a different color.
Starting from the leftmost wedge and moving right, the colors progress from deep violet-purple to saturated yellow-green, then a warm orange-red, followed by a dark, earthy brown, and a deep violet-purple wedge on the far right. The outer edges of the wedges create an irregular polygonal silhouette, with the shape spreading broadly toward the left and lower edges, while the converging point at the top remains sharply defined. The only line that is level is the bottom of the orange triangle, which runs parallel to the floor. Otherwise, every edge of the pyramid is at an angle.
The edges of the wedges are defined with crisp, straight lines, while the watercolor allows subtle variations in tone to show through. Both the irregular pyramid and the sky-blue field that contain it are overlaid with a grid of thin, black graphite lines. Below the blue field, near the lower left margin of the paper, is a small graphite sketch— a simple diagram of the larger watercolor drawing, with facets labeled with individual letters that refer to the combinations of overlapping colors used to achieve each hue: the ground is labeled "B" (blue); the violet wedge is labeled "BR" (blue and red); the green wedge is labeled "BY" (blue and yellow); the orange wedge is labeled "YR" (yellow and red); the brown wedge is labeled "BYGR" (blue, yellow, gray, and red); and the violet wedge on the right is labeled "BGR" (blue, gray, and red). Below the diagram is the artist's signature in pencil.
The paper's deckled edges are visible against a white mat.
The piece is centered within a light wood frame and is installed on a wall perpendicular to, and close by, Sol LeWitt's much larger Wall Drawing #477.
Artwork Label Text
August 2007
First drawn by: Chip Allen, Takeshi Arita, Andrew Colbert, Sarah Heinemann, John Hogan, Gabriel Hurier, Sara Krugman, Roland Lusk, Anthony Sansotta, and Michael Benjamin Vedder
First installation: Pace Wildenstein, New York
Graphite on wall
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2008
From a distance, this cropped “X” form pops out from the wall; closer up, you can see the underlying texture of irregular scribbling that builds the illusion. Here and in LeWitt’s other Scribbles wall drawings, subtle shadings in tone are achieved by varying the hardness and thickness of the graphite and the amount of time spent on each section. The artist’s diagram for this work maps twelve bands ranging from dark to light and back again. This was among the last wall drawings that LeWitt created before his death in 2007.
Family Label: X marks the perfect spot!
This drawing may look neat and tidy, but it is made from many small scribbles. Sol LeWitt liked mixing careful plans with messy marks. When many scribbles come together, they form a clear shape.
Take a closer look: Can you pose to resemble a shape you find?
Visual Description
A nearly square, graphite drawing about nine feet tall—almost the height of a basketball hoop—by nine feet wide made directly on a white wall of the gallery presents a single, oversized X. The X is formed by two wide diagonal bands crossing at the center, each band ending in clipped corners so the tips look flattened rather than pointed. Graphite shading—produced from layers of scribbling—creates a smooth gradient: the outer edges of each diagonal arm are the darkest, deep charcoal-gray, and the tone steadily lightens toward the middle of each band. At the exact crossing point, the interior brightens to a pale gray, producing a soft, luminous center where the two diagonals overlap. The surface texture shows fine, speckled graphite grain, especially visible in the midtones, giving the gradients a misty, sprayed effect despite being drawn.
Artwork Label Text
1998
Paint and wood
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1999
Unlike the nearby objects, this is not a stand-alone artwork but a scale study for a roughly sixteen-foot-tall stepped pyramid composed of uniform concrete blocks, which has been installed in the sculpture garden of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, since 1999. LeWitt began creating large outdoor structures from concrete blocks in the mid-1980s. The material appealed to him as common, widely available, and not usually associated with art. It also provided a simple, ready-made module that could be repeated to create various geometric forms.
Visual Description
A painted wood model, rising to just below knee height and stretching three feet by three feet across, takes the form of a stepped pyramid set on a square platform. The structure is built from dozens of identical, small rectangular blocks arranged in tight, regular rows that climb upward in terraces. Each of the four sloping faces is composed of these offset blocks, producing a rhythmic grid of protrusions and shadowed recesses. The pyramid culminates in a small, flat-topped peak made of a few stacked blocks, slightly offset like the final steps of a stair. The surface is uniformly painted a cool, pale gray. A small typewritten label on one side of the flat base provides the scale of the model. It reads: "Scale: 1 ½ inches = 16 inches."
Artwork Label Text
1985–86
Paint and wood
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1988
Visual Description
A white-painted symmetrical geometric wooden spire stands at almost seven-feet tall—higher than a tall adult. The form is a steep, tapering, irregular pyramid divided into six flat triangular planes that are broad at the base—about three feet wide—and narrow to a precise point at the top. The base would form an irregular pentagon (a five-sided polygon with uneven sides and angles), but on one side of the sculpture—the side that faces toward the center of the gallery—two of the neighboring planes cut inward, as though a three-sided pyramid has been cut out from the larger structure.
Deep in the center of this cutout, the edges meet. This central line forms an axis of symmetry, with the structure identical on either side of it. The edges of the work are clean and sharp, and the white-painted surface is flat and uniform throughout, but the various planes catch the gallery light in different ways, so that some sides—including in the cut-away section—are more in shadow. It is presented here on a white rectangular museum platform.
Artwork Label Text
1986
Paint and wood
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1987
Visual Description
A white-painted wood structure forms a hollow, irregular pyramid that is about three feet tall—rising just past the average adult's stomach—and two feet wide and deep. The structure has a framework of uniformly thick bars with flat planes and sharp edges; each side of the pyramid is otherwise open, allowing views through its empty interior. The structure's base is a parallelogram. The four sides rise up to a point that is far off-center, so that the structure leans significantly. Although the white-painted surface is flat and uniform throughout, the various planes catch the gallery light in different ways, so that some sides are more in shadow. The structure is presented here on a white rectangular museum platform.