Sol LeWitt is primarily known for his loud, large scale, franchisable wall murals, as well as being at the forefront of the minimalist and conceptual art movement. In his essay “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” he stated, “I will refer to the kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman.” [1]

R27 epitomizes LeWitt’s above manifesto as it takes the medium down to its purest form — the artist creates the composition purely out of the medium itself, without any other additions. The collage, made of ripped paper, confronts the viewer with the materiality of the medium. LeWitt called these works his torn or folded paper “drawings” in which the medium itself presents the composition. The geometrical pattern of R27 is created by the material itself and exists within the work’s surface. LeWitt created these works in a sort of diaristic way. He often gifted them to friends and dealers, he said, “I used to just give them away to friends. I never really wanted to do them as a major kind of work […] I want to keep this a private kind of thing; that’s why I want them to be sold as cheaply as possible.” [2]

[1] 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' in Artforum, June 1967, p. 80

[2] Oral History interview with Sol Lewitt, July 15, 1974, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.