Signature

Date1974

Artist Anne Truitt (American, 1921-2004)

CultureAmerican

MediumAcrylic on wood

DimensionsSight: 95 1/2 x 27 x 8 in. (242.57 x 68.58 x 20.32 cm)

Credit LineGift of Cicely d'Autremont Angleton, class of 1944, and Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, class of 1945-4, in memory of Mary Pinchot Meyer, class of 1942

On View

On view

Period20th c

Classification(s)

Sculpture

SignedBottom underside: Truitt '74

BibliographyBradford, Lauren. "Anne Truitt, 'Signature' (1974)." Dia Art Foundation Blog, 2021. https://www.diaart.blog/home/anne-truitt-signature-1974Exhibition HistoryLincoln, Nebraska, Sheldon Memorial and Sculpture Garden, University of Nebraska, "Anne Truitt Exhibition," March 8-May 10, 2003;

Washington, D.C., Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, "Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection," October 8, 2009 - January 3, 2010;

Anne Truitt, Dia Center for the Arts, Beacon, NY, June 15, 2021 - February 13, 2022

Label TextBorn in Baltimore in 1921, Anne Truitt had undiagnosed nearsightedness until age ten, a condition she later described as foundational to her reduction and abstraction of life’s shapes and experiences into spare value and form. Produced after more than a decade of working in minimalist large-scale wooden sculpture, Signature evokes the artist’s earlier work with fence-like forms and stelae. In the spring of 1975, in what would become her celebrated artist-journal Daybook, Truitt wrote of the cruciform work, “Signature stretched wide, then closed in on itself into one column. . . . This is precisely what I intended, though I cannot say how I hoped it would happen.” Signature is striking for its idiosyncratic pulse of color. The title immediately recalls the of the sign of the artist, but “signature,” notating beats per measure, also marks the column across time. Signature was donated to Vassar in memory of Mary Pinchot Meyer, an artist associated with Color Field painting, who shared a studio with Truitt in Washington, DC. The renewal of her early forms, paired with her growing study of color, makes Signature a pivotal work of Truitt’s and signals the more ebullient sculptures she would craft over the subsequent three decades.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email loebcollections@vassar.edu