Melvin Edwards

Edwards is an American sculptor best known for the Lynch Fragments he has created since 1963. He was among a group of prominent artists that emerged in the 1960s with work that underscores the capacity of abstract art to communicate social content. He created this drawing using pieces left over from a series of sculptures constructed from barbed wire, which he exhibited at the Whitney Museum in 1970. He laid wire on the sheet along either side of a vertical axis and then applied watercolor, spraying the paint from squeeze bottles to create an aerosol effect. After removing the wire, he continued to work the sheet, including by painting red barbed wire in the areas that the metal had covered. There is a productive tension between the exuberant colors and the violent implications of barbed wire.