Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including
conceptual art and
minimalism
In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...
.
LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he preferred to "sculptures") but was prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, installation, and artist's books. He has been the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world since 1965. The first biography of the artist, ''Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas'', by Lary Bloom, was published by Wesleyan University Press in the spring of 2019.
Life
LeWitt was born in
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...
, to a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father died when he was 6. His mother took him to art classes at the
Wadsworth Atheneum
The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...
in Hartford. After earning a
BFA from
Syracuse University
Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York, United States. It was established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church but has been nonsectarian since 1920 ...
in 1949, LeWitt traveled to Europe where he was exposed to
paintings. Shortly thereafter, he served in the
Korean War
The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...
, first in
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
, then
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
, and finally
Korea
Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...
. LeWitt moved to New York City in 1953 and set up a studio on the Lower East Side, in the old Ashkenazi Jewish settlement on
Hester Street. During this time he studied at the
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
History
This school was started by Silas ...
while also pursuing his interest in design at ''
Seventeen'' magazine, where he did paste-ups, mechanicals, and photostats.
[ In 1955, he was a ]graphic designer
A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...
in the office of architect I.M. Pei for a year. Around that time, LeWitt also discovered the work of the late 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard Muybridge ( ; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture Movie projector, projection.
He ...
, whose studies in sequence and locomotion were an early influence for him. These experiences, combined with an entry-level job as a night receptionist and clerk he took in 1960 at the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
(MoMA) in New York, would influence LeWitt's later work.
At MoMA, LeWitt's co-workers included fellow artists Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, Gene Beery, and Robert Mangold, and the future art critic and writer, Lucy Lippard
Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. ...
who worked as a page in the library. Curator Dorothy Canning Miller's now famous 1960 "Sixteen Americans" exhibition with work by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg
Milton Ernest "Robert" or "Bob" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combine painting, Combines (1954� ...
, and Frank Stella
Frank Philip Stella (May 12, 1936 – May 4, 2024) was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. He lived and worked in New York City for much of his career befor ...
created a swell of excitement and discussion among the community of artists with whom LeWitt associated. LeWitt also became friends with Hanne Darboven, Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...
, and Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973) was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and mu ...
.
LeWitt taught at several New York schools, including New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
and the School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
History
This school was started by Silas ...
, during the late 1960s. In 1980, LeWitt left New York for Spoleto, Italy. After returning to the United States in the late 1980s, LeWitt made Chester, Connecticut, his primary residence.[Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum]
Collection online: Sol LeWitt
. Accessed April 17, 2011. He died at age 78 in New York from cancer complications.
Work
LeWitt is regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art.[ His prolific two and three-dimensional work ranges from wall drawings (over 1200 of which have been executed) to hundreds of works on paper extending to structures in the form of ]tower
A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...
s, pyramid
A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...
s, geometric forms, and progressions. These works range in size from books and gallery-sized installations to monumental outdoor pieces. LeWitt's first serial sculptures were created in the 1960s using the modular form of the square in arrangements of varying visual complexity. In Issue 5 of ''0 To 9'' magazine, LeWitt's work 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' was published.This piece became one of the most widely cited artists' writings of the 1960s, exploring the relationship between art, practice and art criticism
Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is quest ...
. In 1979, LeWitt participated in the design for the Lucinda Childs Dance Company's piece ''Dance''.
Sculpture
In the early 1960s, LeWitt first began to create his "structures", a term he used to describe his three-dimensional work.[Sol LeWitt: Structures and Drawings, April 28 - June 30, 2011](_blank)
Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York. His frequent use of open, modular structures originates from the cube
A cube or regular hexahedron is a three-dimensional space, three-dimensional solid object in geometry, which is bounded by six congruent square (geometry), square faces, a type of polyhedron. It has twelve congruent edges and eight vertices. It i ...
, a form that influenced the artist's thinking from the time that he first became an artist. After creating an early body of work made up of closed-form wooden objects, heavily lacquered by hand, in the mid-1960s he "decided to remove the skin altogether and reveal the structure". This skeletal form, the radically simplified open cube, became a basic building block of the artist's three-dimensional work. In the mid-1960s, LeWitt began to work with the open cube: twelve identical linear elements connected at eight corners to form a skeletal structure. From 1969, he would conceive many of his modular structures on a large scale, to be constructed in aluminum or steel by industrial fabricators. Several of LeWitt's cube structures stood at approximate eye level. The artist introduced bodily proportion to his fundamental sculptural unit at this scale.[Sol LeWitt: Structures 1965-2006, May 24 – December 2, 2011](_blank)
Public Art Fund, New York.
Following early experimentation LeWitt settled on a standard version for his modular cubes, circa 1965: the negative space
In art and design, negative space or negative volume is the empty space around and between the subject(s) of an image. In graphic design this is known as white space. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, not th ...
between the beams would stand to the positive space
Positive is a property of Positivity (disambiguation), positivity and may refer to:
Mathematics and science
* Positive formula, a logical formula not containing negation
* Positive number, a number that is greater than 0
* Plus sign, the sign " ...
of the sculptural material itself in a ratio of 8.5:1, or . The material would also be painted white instead of black, to avoid the "expressiveness" of the black color of earlier, similar pieces. Both the ratio and the color were arbitrary aesthetic choices, but once taken they were used consistently in several pieces which typify LeWitt's "modular cube" works. Museums holding specimens of LeWitt's modular cube works have published lesson suggestions for elementary education, meant to encourage children to investigate the mathematical properties of the artworks.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, LeWitt composed some of his sculptures from stacked cinder blocks, still generating variations within self-imposed restrictions. At this time, he began to work with concrete blocks. In 1985, the first cement ''Cube'' was built in a park in Basel
Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...
. From 1990 onwards, LeWitt conceived multiple variations on a tower to be constructed using concrete blocks. In a shift away from his well-known geometric vocabulary of forms, the works LeWitt realized in the late 1990s indicate vividly the artist's growing interest in somewhat random curvilinear shapes and highly saturated colors.
In 2007, LeWitt conceived ''9 Towers'', a cube made from more than 1,000 light-coloured bricks that measure five meters on each side. It was installed at the Kivik Art Centre in Lilla Stenshuvud, Sweden, in 2014.
Wall drawings
In 1968, LeWitt began to conceive sets of guidelines or simple diagrams for his two-dimensional works drawn directly on the wall, executed first in graphite
Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...
, then in crayon
A crayon (or wax pastel) is a stick of pigmented wax used for writing or drawing. Wax crayons differ from pastels, in which the pigment is mixed with a dry binder (material), binder such as gum arabic, and from oil pastels, where the binder is a ...
, later in colored pencil and finally in chromatically rich washes of India ink
India ink (British English: Indian ink; also Chinese ink) is a simple black or coloured ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing and outlining, especially when inking comic books and comic strips. In ...
, bright acrylic paint, and other materials. Since he created a work of art for Paula Cooper Gallery's inaugural show in 1968,[Sol LeWitt, September 3 - October 10, 2013](_blank)
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. an exhibition to benefit the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, thousands of LeWitt's drawings have been installed directly on the surfaces of walls. Between 1969 and 1970 he created four "Drawings Series", which presented different combinations of the basic element that governed many of his early wall drawings. In each series he applied a different system of change to each of twenty-four possible combinations of a square divided into four equal parts, each containing one of the four basic types of lines LeWitt used (vertical, horizontal, diagonal left, and diagonal right). The result is four possible permutations for each of the twenty-four original units. The system used in Drawings Series I is what LeWitt termed 'Rotation,' Drawings Series II uses a system termed 'Mirror,' Drawings Series III uses 'Cross & Reverse Mirror,' and Drawings Series IV uses 'Cross Reverse'.
In ''Wall Drawing #122'', first installed in 1972 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
in Cambridge, the work contains "all combinations of two lines crossing, placed at random, using arcs from corners and sides, straight, not straight and broken lines" resulting in 150 unique pairings that unfold on the gallery walls. LeWitt further expanded on this theme, creating variations such as ''Wall Drawing #260'' at the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
, New York, which systematically runs through all possible two-part combinations of arcs and lines. Conceived in 1995, ''Wall Drawing #792: Black rectangles and squares'' underscores LeWitt's early interest in the intersections between art and architecture. Spanning the two floors of the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, this work consists of varying combinations of black rectangles, creating an irregular grid-like pattern.
LeWitt, who had moved to Spoleto, Italy, in the late 1970s credited his transition from graphite pencil or crayon to vivid ink washes, to his encounter with the frescoes of Giotto
Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto, was an List of Italian painters, Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the International Gothic, Gothic and Italian Ren ...
, Masaccio
Masaccio (, ; ; December 21, 1401 – summer 1428), born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great List of Italian painters, Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaiss ...
, and other early Florentine painters. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he created highly saturated colorful acrylic wall drawings. While their forms are curvilinear, playful and seem almost random, they are also drawn according to an exacting set of guidelines. The bands are a standard width, for example, and no colored section may touch another section of the same color.
In 2005 LeWitt began a series of 'scribble' wall drawings, so termed because they required the draftsmen to fill in areas of the wall by scribbling with graphite. The scribbling occurs at six different densities, which are indicated on the artist's diagrams and then mapped out in string on the surface of the wall. The gradations of scribble density produce a continuum of tone that implies three dimensions. The largest scribble wall drawing, ''Wall Drawing #1268'', is on view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
According to the principle of his work, LeWitt's wall drawings are usually executed by people other than the artist himself. Even after his death, people are still making these drawings. He would therefore eventually use teams of assistants to create such works. Writing about making wall drawings, LeWitt himself observed in 1971 that "each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently". Between 1968 and his death in 2007, LeWitt created more than 1,270 wall drawings. The wall drawings, executed on-site, generally exist for the duration of an exhibition; they are then destroyed, giving the work in its physical form an ephemeral quality. They can be installed, removed, and then reinstalled in another location, as many times as required for exhibition purposes. When transferred to another location, the number of walls can change only by ensuring that the proportions of the original diagram are retained.
Permanent murals by LeWitt can be found at, among others, the AXA Center, New York (1984–85);[Carol Vogel (July 4, 2013)]
LeWitt's Reach Extends To Another Lobby
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''. The Swiss Re headquarters Americas in Armonk, New York, the Atlanta City Hall
Atlanta City Hall is the headquarters of the City of Atlanta government. It was constructed in 1930, and is located in Downtown Atlanta. It is a high-rise office tower very similar to dozens of other city halls built in the United States duri ...
, Atlanta (''Wall Drawing #581'', 1989/90); the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC (''Wall Drawing #1103'', 2003); the Conrad Hotel, New York (''Loopy Doopy (Blue and Purple)'', 1999); the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (''Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG)'', 2006/2010); Akron Art Museum, Akron (2007); the Columbus Circle Subway Station, New York; The Jewish Museum (New York), New York; the Green Center for Physics at MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
, Cambridge (''Bars of Colors Within Squares (MIT)'', 2007); the Embassy of the United States in Berlin; the Wadsworth Atheneum
The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...
; and John Pearson's House, Oberlin, Ohio
Oberlin () is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States. It is located about southwest of Cleveland within the Cleveland metropolitan area. The population was 8,555 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Oberlin is the home of Oberlin ...
. The artist's last public wall drawing, ''Wall Drawing #1259: Loopy Doopy (Springfield)'' (2008), is at the United States Courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts
Springfield is the most populous city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, and its county seat. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ea ...
(designed by architect Moshe Safdie
Moshe Safdie (; born July 14, 1938) is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. He is well known for incorporating principles of socially responsible design throughout his six-decade career. His projects include cultural, ed ...
). ''Wall Drawing #599: Circles 18'' (1989) — a bull's eye of concentric circles in alternating bands of yellow, blue, red and white — was installed at the lobby of the Jewish Community Center
A Jewish Community Center or a Jewish Community Centre (JCC) is a general recreational, social, and fraternal organization serving the Jewish community in a number of cities. JCCs promote Jewish culture and heritage through holiday celebrations, ...
, New York, in 2013.
Gouaches
In the 1980s, in particular after a trip to Italy, LeWitt started using gouache
Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouach ...
, an opaque water-based paint, to produce free-flowing abstract works in contrasting colors. These represented a significant departure from the rest of his practice, as he created these works with his own hands. LeWitt's gouaches are often created in series based on a specific motif. Past series have included ''Irregular Forms'', ''Parallel Curves'', ''Squiggly Brushstrokes'', ''Web-like Grids'' and ''Horizontal Lines''.
Although this loosely rendered composition may have been a departure from his earlier, more geometrically structured works visually, it nevertheless remained in alignment with his original artistic intent. LeWitt painstakingly made his own prints from his gouache compositions. In 2012, art advisor Heidi Lee Komaromi curated, "Sol LeWitt: Works on Paper 1983-2003", an exhibition revealing the variety of techniques LeWitt employed on paper during the final decades of his life.
Artist's books
From 1966, LeWitt's interest in seriality led to his production of more than 50 artist's books
Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that engage with and transform the form of a book. Some are mass-produced with multiple editions, some are published in small editions, while others are produced as one-of-a-kind o ...
throughout his career; he later donated many examples to the Wadsworth Athenaeum's library. In 1976 LeWitt helped found Printed Matter, Inc, a for-profit art space in the Tribeca
Tribeca ( ), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Str ...
neighborhood of New York City with fellow artists and critics Lucy Lippard
Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. ...
, Carol Androcchio, Amy Baker (Sandback), Edit DeAk, Mike Glier, Nancy Linn, Walter Robinson, Ingrid Sischy, Pat Steir, Mimi Wheeler, Robin White and Irena von Zahn. LeWitt was a signal innovator of the genre of the "artist's book," a term that was coined for a 1973 exhibition curated by Dianne Perry Vanderlip at Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia.
Printed Matter was one of the first organizations dedicated to creating and distributing artists' books, incorporating self-publishing, small-press publishing, and artist networks and collectives. For LeWitt and others, Printed Matter also served as a support system for avant-garde artists, balancing its role as publisher, exhibition space, retail space, and community center for the downtown arts scene, in that sense emulating the network of aspiring artists LeWitt knew and enjoyed as a staff member at the Museum of Modern Art.
Architecture and landscaping
LeWitt collaborated with architect Stephen Lloyd to design a synagogue for his congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek; he conceptualized the "airy" synagogue building, with its shallow dome supported by "exuberant wooden roof beams", an homage to the wooden synagogues of eastern Europe.
In 1981, LeWitt was invited by the Fairmount Park Art Association (currently known as the Association for Public Art) to propose a public artwork for a site in Fairmount Park. He selected the long, rectangular plot of land known as the Reilly Memorial and submitted a drawing with instructions. Installed in 2011, ''Lines in Four Directions in Flowers'' is made up of more than 7,000 plantings arranged in strategically configured rows. In his original proposal, the artist planned an installation of flower plantings of four different colors (white, yellow, red & blue) in four equal rectangular areas, in rows of four directions (vertical, horizontal, diagonal right & left) framed by evergreen hedges of about 2' height, with each color block comprising four to five species that bloom sequentially.
In 2004, ''Six Curved Walls'' sculpture was installed on the hillside slope of Crouse College on Syracuse University
Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York, United States. It was established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church but has been nonsectarian since 1920 ...
campus. The concrete block sculpture consists of six undulating walls, each 12 feet high, and spans 140 feet. The sculpture was designed and constructed to mark the inauguration of Nancy Cantor as the 11th Chancellor of Syracuse University
This is a list of the Chancellors of Syracuse University, a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, Syracuse, New York (state), New York, United States.
The title of Syracuse University's head officer was changed from ''"Chancel ...
.
Collection
Since the early 1960s he and his wife, Carol Androccio, gathered nearly 9,000 works of art through purchases, in trades with other artists and dealers, or as gifts. In this way he acquired works by approximately 750 artists, including Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Hanne Darboven, Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse (January 11, 1936 – May 29, 1970) was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 196 ...
, Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism.Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for ...
, On Kawara
was a Japanese conceptual artist who lived in SoHo, New York City, from 1965 until his death. He took part in many solo and group Art exhibition, exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1976.
Early life
Kawara was born in Kariya, Japan on ...
, Kazuko Miyamoto, Carl Andre, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke
Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of institutional critique, and is considered to be the most harsh and consistent critic of museums among t ...
, Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced Abstract art, abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, photographs and Glass art, glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important con ...
, and others. In 2007, the exhibition "Selections from The LeWitt Collection" at the Weatherspoon Art Museum assembled approximately 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs, among them works by Andre, Alice Aycock, Bernd and Hilla Becher
Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (; 20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their e ...
, Jan Dibbets, Jackie Ferrara, Gilbert and George
Gilbert Prousch, sometimes referred to as Gilbert Proesch (born 17 September 1943), and George Passmore (born 8 January 1942) are artists who work together as the collaborative art duo Gilbert & George. They are known for their formal appearance ...
, Alex Katz
Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and printmaking, prints. Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions through ...
, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Mario Merz, Shirin Neshat
Shirin Neshat (; born March 26, 1957) is an Iranian photographer and visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Her artwork centers on the contrasts between Islam and the West, femininit ...
, Pat Steir, and many other artists.
Exhibitions
LeWitt's work was first publicly exhibited in 1964 in a group show curated by Dan Flavin at the Kaymar Gallery, New York. Dan Graham's John Daniels Gallery later gave him his first solo show in 1965. In 1966, he participated in the
Primary Structures
exhibit at the Jewish Museum
A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area.
Notable Jewish museums include:
Albania
* Solomon Museum, Berat
Australia
* Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourn ...
in New York (a seminal show which helped define the minimalist movement), submitting an untitled, open modular cube of 9 units. The same year he was included in the "10" exhibit at Dwan Gallery, New York. He was later invited by Harald Szeemann
Harald Szeemann (11 June 1933 – 18 February 2005) was a Swiss curator, artist, and art history, art historian. Having curated more than 200 exhibitions, many of which have been characterized as groundbreaking, Szeemann is said to have helped red ...
to participate in "When Attitude Becomes Form," at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, in 1969. Interviewed in 1993 about those years LeWitt remarked, "I decided I would make color or form recede and proceed in a three-dimensional way."
The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague
The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
presented his first retrospective exhibition in 1970, and his work was later shown in a major mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
, New York in 1978.[Sol LeWitt: Works on Paper, May 8 - June 19, 2009.]
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Accessed April 17, 2011. In 1972/1973, LeWitt's first museum shows in Europe were mounted at the Kunsthalle Bern and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. In 1975, Lewitt created "The Location of a Rectangle for the Hartford Atheneum" for the third MATRIX exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Later that year, he participated in the Wadsworth Atheneum's sixth MATRIX exhibition, providing instructions for a second wall drawing. MoMA gave LeWitt his first retrospective in 1978-79. The exhibition traveled to various American venues. For the 1987 Skulptur Projekte Münster, Germany, he realized ''Black Form: Memorial to the Missing Jews'', a rectangular wall of black concrete blocks for the center of a plaza in front of an elegant, white Neoclassical government building; it is now installed at Altona Town Hall, Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
. Other major exhibitions since include ''Sol LeWitt Drawings 1958-1992'', which was organized by the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
in 1992 which traveled over the next three years to museums in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
, France, Spain, and the United States; and in 1996, the Museum of Modern Art, New York mounted a traveling survey exhibition: "Sol LeWitt Prints: 1970-1995". A major LeWitt retrospective
A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...
was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...
in 2000. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art art gallery, museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side, Chicago, Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is on ...
, and Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
, New York.
In 2006, LeWitt's ''Drawing Series...'' was displayed at Dia:Beacon and was devoted to the 1970s drawings by the conceptual artist. Drafters and assistants drew directly on the walls using graphite
Graphite () is a Crystallinity, crystalline allotrope (form) of the element carbon. It consists of many stacked Layered materials, layers of graphene, typically in excess of hundreds of layers. Graphite occurs naturally and is the most stable ...
, colored pencil
A colored pencil (American English), coloured pencil (Commonwealth English), colour pencil (Indian English), map pencil, pencil crayon, or coloured/colouring lead (Canadian English, Newfoundland English) is a type of pencil constructed of a na ...
, crayon
A crayon (or wax pastel) is a stick of pigmented wax used for writing or drawing. Wax crayons differ from pastels, in which the pigment is mixed with a dry binder (material), binder such as gum arabic, and from oil pastels, where the binder is a ...
, and chalk
Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...
. The works were based on LeWitt's complex principles, which eliminated the limitations of the canvas for more extensive constructions.
"Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective", a collaboration between the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), and the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) opened to the public in 2008 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. The exhibition will be on view for 25 years and is housed in a three-story historic mill building in the heart of MASS MoCA's campus fully restored by Bruner/Cott and Associates architects (and outfitted with a sequence of new interior walls constructed to LeWitt's specifications.) The exhibition consists of 105 drawings — comprising nearly one acre of wall surface — that LeWitt created over 40 years from 1969 to 2007 and includes several drawings never before seen, some of which LeWitt created for the project shortly before his death.
Furthermore, the artist was the subject of exhibitions at P.S. 1 Contemporary Center, Long Island City
Long Island City (LIC) is a neighborhood within the New York City borough of Queens. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; Sunnyside to the east; and Newtown Creek, which separates Queens from Greenpoint, Brook ...
(''Concrete Blocks''); the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover (''Twenty-Five Years of Wall Drawings, 1968-1993''); and Wadsworth Atheneum
The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...
Museum of Art, Hartford
Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...
(''Incomplete Cubes''), which traveled to three art museums in the United States. At the time of his death, LeWitt had just organized a retrospective of his work at the Allen Memorial Art Museum
The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is an art museum located in Oberlin, Ohio, and it is run by Oberlin College. Founded in 1917, the collection contains over 15,000 works of art.
Overview
The AMAM is primarily a teaching museum and is aimed at ...
in Oberlin, Ohio
Oberlin () is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States. It is located about southwest of Cleveland within the Cleveland metropolitan area. The population was 8,555 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Oberlin is the home of Oberlin ...
.
At Naples ''Sol LeWitt. L'artista e i suoi artisti'' opened at the Museo Madre on December 15, 2012, running until April 1, 2013.
Museum collections
LeWitt's works are found in the most important museum collections including: Tate Modern
Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...
, London, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade, Centre Georges Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
, Paris, Hallen für Neue Kunst Hallen may refer to:
* Hallen Court District, Sweden
* Hallen, Gloucestershire, England
* Hallen, Sweden, in Åre Municipality, Jämtland County
* Hallen A.F.C., a football club in Hallen, England
* Hallen (surname), an English surname
See also Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia, Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Dia:Beacon, The Jewish Museum in Manhattan, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology List Art Center's Public Art Collection, Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
, National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...
, Washington D.C., and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...
. The erection of Double Negative Pyramid by Sol LeWitt at Europos Parkas in Vilnius, Lithuania was a significant event in the history of art in post Berlin Wall era.
Influence
Sol LeWitt was one of the main figures of his time; he transformed the process of art-making by questioning the fundamental relationship between an idea, the subjectivity of the artist, and the artwork a given idea might produce. While many artists were challenging modern conceptions of originality, authorship, and artistic genius in the 1960s, LeWitt denied that approaches such as Minimalism
In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...
, Conceptualism
In metaphysics, conceptualism is a theory that explains universality of particulars as conceptualized frameworks situated within the thinking mind. Intermediate between nominalism and realism, the conceptualist view approaches the metaphysical ...
, and Process Art
Process art is an artistic movement where the end product of art and craft, the '':wikt:objet d’art, objet d’art'' (work of art/found object), is not the principal focus; the process of its making is one of the most relevant aspects if not th ...
were merely technical or illustrative of philosophy. In his ''Paragraphs on Conceptual Art'', LeWitt asserted that Conceptual art was neither mathematical nor intellectual but intuitive, given that the complexity inherent to transforming an idea into a work of art was fraught with contingencies. LeWitt's art is not about the singular hand of the artist; it is the idea behind each work that surpasses the work itself. In the early 21st century, LeWitt's work, especially the wall drawings, has been critically acclaimed for its economic perspicacity. Though modest—most exist as simple instructions on a sheet of paper—the drawings can be made again and again and again, anywhere in the world, without the artist needing to be involved in their production.
Art world
His auction record of $749,000 was set in 2014 for his gouache on paperboard piece ''Wavy Brushstroke'' (1995) at Sotheby's
Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
, New York.Sol LeWitt, ''Wavy Brushstroke'', Sale 226
Sotheby's, CONTEMPORARY ART DAY AUCTION, November 12, 2014, New York.
Selected books
* Bloom, Lary. ''Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas,'' Wesleyan University Press, 2019. ()
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Arcs, from Corners & Sides, Circles, & Grids and All Their Combinations''. Bern, Switzerland: Kunsthalle Bern & Paul Biancini, 1972.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''The Location of Eight Points''. Washington, DC: Max Protetch Gallery, 1974.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Photogrids''. New York: P. David Press, 1977/1978.
* Legg, Alicia (ed.). ''Sol LeWitt: the Museum of Modern Art, New York''. New York: The Museum, 1978.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Geometric Figures & Color''. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1979.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Autobiography''. New York and Boston: Multiple and Lois and Michael K. Torf, 1980.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, 1968-1984''. msterdam, Endhoven, and Hartford, CT: Stedelijk Museum, Van Abbemuseum, and Wadsworth Atheneum, 1984.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Sol LeWitt Prints, 1970-86''. London: Tate Gallery, 1986.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Sol LeWitt Drawings, 1958-1992''. The Hague: Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1992.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Sol LeWitt, Twenty-Five Years of Wall Drawings, 1968-1993''. Andover, MA, and Seattle: Addison Gallery of American Art and University of Washington Press, 1993.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Sol LeWitt - Structures, 1962-1993''. Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1993.
* LeWitt, Sol, Cristina Bechtler, and Charlotte von Koerber. ''100 Cubes''. Ostfildern: Cantz, 1996.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Sol LeWitt, Bands of Color''. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999.
* Garrels, Gary, and Sol LeWitt. ''Sol LeWitt: a Retrospective''. San Francisco and New Haven: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yale University Press, 2000.
* Gale, Peggy (ed.). ''Artists Talk: 1969–1977''. Halifax, NS: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
NSCAD University, also known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), is a public university, public art school, art university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution tha ...
, 2001.
* LeWitt, Sol, Nicholas Baume, Jonathan Flatley, and Pamela M. Lee. ''Sol LeWitt: Incomplete Open Cubes''. Hartford, CT, and Cambridge, MA: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and MIT Press, 2001.
* LeWitt, Sol, Dean Swanson, and Martin L. Friedman. ''LeWitt x 2: Sol LeWitt: Structure and Line: Selections from the LeWitt Collection''. Madison, WI: Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 2006.
* LeWitt, Sol. ''Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings''. Bologna, Italy: Damiani, 2006.
* Cross, Susan, and Denise Markonish (eds.). ''Sol LeWitt: 100 Views''. North Adams, MA, and New Haven, CT: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Yale University Press, 2009.
* Maffei, Giorgio, and Emanuele De Donno. ''Sol LeWitt: Artist's Books''. Sant'Eraclio di Foligno, Italy: Viaindustriae, 2009.
*''LINES & FORMES (sic)'', Livre d'artiste (album de douze planches en noir et blanc), édité par YVON LAMBERT, Paris 1989, .
* Roberts, Veronica (ed.), Lucy R. Lippard, and Kirsten Swenson. "Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt." Austin: Blanton Museum of Art. Distributed by Yale University Press, 2014.
* ''An Exchange with Sol LeWitt'', introduction by Regine Basha (New York: Cabinet Books, 2011).
* Stolz, George, and Sol LeWitt. ''Sol LeWitt: Fotografía.'' Madrid, Spain: Fondación ICO / La Fábrica Editorial, 2003.
See also
* 54 Columns
References
External links
Sol LeWitt exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC 2013
*
1974 July 15, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
In vast LeWitt show, absurdity and beauty
''Boston Globe'', Boston, MA
* Cotter, Holland
''New York Times'', December 4, 2008.
* Lacayo, Richard
''Time'' magazine, November 17, 2008.
Exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2008
Thomas Dreher: Sol LeWitt: Differenz und Indifferenz
in: Künstler – Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst, issue 6. Munich 1989 (German)
Thomas Dreher: Sol LeWitt: The two Series "Forms derived from a Cube" and "Pyramids"
(PDF
Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...
file, 8 p., ca. 10 MB)
* Dreher, Thomas
Sol LeWitt: Structures 1962-1993.
(German, illustrated review of an exhibition in 1993 at the Villa Stuck in Munich)
* Dreher, Thomas
(German, illustrations of a room in the Lenbachhaus in Munich with four wall drawings realized by LeWitt's crew in 1986)
Crown Point Press
LeWitt's prints
Sol LeWitt at NMAC Foundation
* Vogel, Carol
''New York Times'', September 13, 2009.
* Kimmelman, Michael
''New York Times'', April 9, 2007.
Obituary
in the ''Connecticut Post
The ''Connecticut Post'' is a daily newspaper located in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It serves Fairfield County and the Lower Naugatuck Valley. Municipalities in the Post's circulation area include Ansonia, Bridgeport, Darien, Derby, Easton ...
''
* Associated Press
"Sol LeWitt, influential American artist, at 78."
April 9, 2007.
* Gray, Sadie
''Independent'', UK, April 10, 2007.
on ArtNet.
Sol LeWitt Interviews, Conceptual Paradise, Leuphana University Lueneburg
Sol LeWitt's exhibition at Fundació Antoni Tàpies
Sol LeWitt at The Jewish Museum
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