Following Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brâncuși), Flavin began creating a series of installations—or “situations,” as the artist himself called them—of light and color that completely redefined the surrounding space. In this way, architecture gained a fundamental role, while corners of exhibition spaces, previously ignored or even entirely discarded as sites for artworks, became important focal points.

Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brâncuși) was not only the pinnacle of this formal reduction but also inaugurated an intimate dialogue that lasted until shortly before Flavin’s death, between him and a group of key artists of his century—some contemporaries and friends of the artist himself. These works reveal, more than any others in his oeuvre, the significance color held in his artistic practice. Due to the artist’s extreme reduction of material support, this dialogue with other artists is based primarily on color and the title of each work.

The fluorescent tube sculptures, dedicated to nearly thirty artists, establish a clear relationship between the color of Flavin’s pieces and the color—almost always characteristic—of the compositions by the referenced artists. For example, the glow of white tubes alludes to the delicacy of installations by Sol LeWitt and Cy Twombly, while the darkness of black tubes refers to the large, nearly monochromatic compositions of Ad Reinhardt. The combination of red, blue, and yellow clearly evokes Piet Mondrian and Alexander “Sandy” Calder, as well as Barnett Newman and his famous series Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue.