About This Artwork

Louis H. Sullivan
American, 1856-1924

System of Architectural Ornament: Plate 16, Impromptu!, 1922

Graphite on Strathmore paper
57.7 x 73.5 cm (22 3/4 x 29 in.)
Signed and dated at bottom center: "Louis H. Sullivan: Oct. 28th 1922"
Manuscript note at top right, "10/17/1922 LHS 10/28/1922"
Commissioned by The Art Institute of Chicago, 1988.15.16

Commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Burnham Library of Architecture in 1922, Louis H. Sullivan’s pencil drawings for A System of Architectural Ornament According with the Philosophy of Man’s Powers (20 plates produced from 1922 to 1923) encapsulate his ideology on ornament, its relationship to nature, and man’s inherent ordering of it. This beautiful drawing allows us to see the genealogy of Sullivan’s vocabulary of ornament—from the inorganic, in which highly complex forms are derived from simple geometries, to the organic deconstruction of natural curvilinear configurations—bringing together the origins of art in nature and science.

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Entire series exhibited at Art Institute, 1995: "Louis Henry Sullivan: from Paris to Chicago".
Individual plates exhibited as noted in Description.

Exhibit, 1987-88 (Paris, Frankfurt, Chicago, San Francisco): Chicago Architcture and Design 1872-1922; cat. no. 163. AIC exhibit, 1993: Chicago's Dream:.

The Art Institute of Chicago: "Louis H. Sullivan: A System of Architectural Ornament," Part 1 (December 24, 2006 - February 18, 2007); Part 2 (March 4, 2007 - June 8, 2007)

Part 1 features Plates 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 17, 18 and 19

Part 2 features Plates 2, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 20