Inner City Variation II

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Ruth Leavitt

1975

23.25" x 29"

Artist and Computer

Description

Ruth Leavitt’s _Inner City Variation II _renders a computer-based design with silkscreen printing. She worked with an interactive Fortran IV program that produced line drawings recorded on microfilm. These machine outputs provided a structural framework. To prepare the image for the silkscreen process, she filled the shaded areas by hand and divided the composition into separate layers, each corresponding to a single color. From these separations, individual screens were made and printed in sequence.

A rectangle appears to fracture as pieces shift outward from the center. Each section is built from stacked shapes that decrease in size toward the top, creating the illusion of depth. Leavitt used four colors to fill these forms, with black introducing the illusion of shadows and reinforcing the sense of three-dimensionality.

Leavitt created multiple versions of the work to test how the same computer-generated structure would appear in various mediums. An earlier oil painting of the image was exhibited at the Minnesota Museum of Art in 1974, as part of the exhibition “Color.”