Anne Truitt

Triad
1977

Triad is an important example of Anne Truitt’s best-known sculptural form, the column, which she consistently explored for nearly four decades beginning in the early 1960s. While the human-size geometric shape made for a ready comparison with the work of contemporaneous Minimalist artists, Truitt favored allusive, evocative titles and did not use the methods of industrial fabrication preferred by practitioners such as Donald Judd and Robert Morris. Triad is wood coated with multiple layers of a warm beige acrylic paint that seems to pulsate with undertones of pale pink. “What I want is color in three dimensions,” the artist explained in 1979, “color set free, to a point where, theoretically, the support should dissolve into pure color.” A thin band of red, inset near the base of the plinth, enables an optical trick that makes Triad appear as if it is rising from the floor, overcoming volume and ascending into the realm of “pure color” that Truitt sought to achieve. 

Not on view

Date
1977

Classification
Sculpture

Medium
Acrylic paint on wood

Dimensions
Overall: 90 9/16 × 8 × 8in. (230 × 20.3 × 20.3 cm)

Accession number
2006.33

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Ann and Gilbert Kinney

Rights and reproductions
© Estate of Anne Truitt; courtesy Bridgeman Images

API
artworks/27757