During the 1960s he developed a theory of conceptual art as an alternative to what he called ‘the useless ideas of Abstract Expressionism’ embodied in painters like Jackson Pollock. His ideas stressed the importance of the conceptual idea rather than the artist’s hand in the creation of a work of art.

His art practice has pushed the boundaries of painting and drawing, creating works which are applied directly to the wall and which transform entire architectural environments. These ‘wall drawings’ were based on verbal proposals or systems suggested by LeWitt but executed by others. In the 1980s his drawings became more expressive, with sensual colour applied to various permutations of geometric shapes. In the past decade, LeWitt has used bold and highly decorative undulating waves and swirling bands of colour in his comparisons.

In Sydney during 1998 for his Wall Pieces exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, LeWitt visited the retrospective exhibition of the Indigenous Australian artist Emily Kngwarreye. Profoundly impressed by her work, he would later acquire several works by the artist, whose thick meandering line in her Yam Dreaming pictures finds a putative association with his body of gouache works from recent times.

Unlike his wall drawings, this gouache belongs to a group of works in which the artist himself executes the work; here the sense of the painter’s hand is satisfyingly present. His obsessive explorations of the permutations and combinations possible with line have been likened to a musical composition, with the harmonic counterpoint of Johann Sebastian Bach.

John Kaldor, a personal friend of the artist for nearly thirty years, has made this apt and most generous donation to mark the launch of the Gallery’s Contemporary Collectors benefaction group. This lyrical work is currently on display in gallery 11.