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Axis: Home at Four Corners

Artist William Itter (American, b. 1942)
Title Axis: Home at Four Corners
Date May 28, 1996
Medium Watercolor over graphite with mica on paper
Dimensions Image (Irregular- including gray border): 24 × 29 1/4 in. (61 × 74.3 cm)
Sheet: 25 3/8 × 32 1/2 in. (64.5 × 82.6 cm)
Framed: 31 1/2 × 37 × 1 5/16 in. (80 × 94 × 3.3 cm)
Credit Line Museum purchase with funds from the Clarence W. and Mildred Long Art Purchase Fund, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 2017.88

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About this Work

William Itter taught generations of IU art students the fundamentals of 2-D design. His interest in color, pattern, and geometric form can be seen in his large ethnographic collections and his own artwork. This watercolor—a study for a large painting already in the museum’s collection—is not only a beautiful object in its own right, but reveals Itter’s working method. He began with the graphite sketch (also in the museum’s collection) to solve compositional problems, such as foreground-background relationship, intersections, and edges, and then created the watercolor to develop the subtle color arrangements before moving on to the final painting. All three works allude to elements from the natural and manmade worlds, while presenting an abstract visual puzzle drawn from memory.


Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

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"Axis: Home at Four Corners | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2024. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=2017.88