Interior View with Statue, Egypt, Travel Sketch

Louis Kahn’s distinctive and monumental modern buildings feature thick concrete and masonry walls, barrel vaults and arches, and geometric solids punctuated by large voids. To understand these forms, scholars have often pointed to the importance of Kahn’s experience in the early 1950s as a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. While visiting Egypt, Greece, and Italy, Kahn made extensive sketch studies of his surroundings, including landscapes and local buildings. Many of his drawings pay particular attention to the effects of light, with long, raking shadows that extenuate the solidity of a wall or volume and endow the everyday with a strong sense of place. In this sketch from Egypt, Kahn produced a sophisticated study of a statue framed by an irregular archway and hemispherical niche. These experiences helped develop Kahn’s ability to script elaborate spatial sequences through hiding or revealing views, seen in the horizon line of the Salk Institute or the diffuse light in his work in Ahmedabad, India.