Sol Lewitt Biography and Artwork

born Hartford, CT (USA) 1928 died April 2007

Sol LeWitt (born 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut- died April 2007) is a conceptual artist and painter.

He has been the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide since 1965. His prolific two and three-dimensional work ranges from Wall Drawings, over 1100 of which have been executed, to photographs and hundreds of works on paper and extends to structures in the form of towers, pyramids, geometric forms, and progressions. These works range in size from maquettes to monumental outdoor pieces.

Sol LeWitt's frequent use of open, modular structures originate from the cube, a form that has influenced the artist's thinking since he first became an artist. Sol LeWitt: Structures includes early Wall Structures and three Serial Projects from the 1960s; four Incomplete Open Cubes from the 1970s; numerous painted white wood pieces from the 1980s: Hexagon, Form Derived from a Cube, Structure with Three Towers, among others as well as Maquettes for Concrete Block Structures from the late 1990s.

After receiving a B.F.A. from Syracuse University in 1949, Sol LeWitt traveled to Europe where he was exposed to Old Master painting. Shortly thereafter, he served in the Korean War, first in California, then Japan, and finally Korea. Sol LeWitt moved to New York City in the 1950s and pursued his interest in design at Seventeen magazine, where he did paste-ups, mechanicals, and photostats. Later, for a year, he was a graphic designer in the office of architect I.M. Pei. Around that time, LeWitt also discovered the photography of Eadweard Muybridge, whose late 1800s studies in sequence and locomotion were an early influence. These experiences, combined with an entry-level job he took in 1960 at The Museum of Modern Art, would influence LeWitt an artist.

At the MoMA, LeWitt's co-workers included fellow artists Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, and Robert Mangold. Curator Dorothy C. Miller's now famous 1960 "Sixteen Americans" exhibition with work by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella created a swell of excitement and discussion among the community of artists with whom LeWitt associated. 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 Museum of Modern Art, New York gave Sol LeWitt his first retrospective in 1978-79. The exhibition traveled to various American venues. Other major exhibitions since include Sol LeWitt Drawings 1958-1992, which was organized by the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, The Netherlands in 1992 which traveled over the next three years to museums in the United Kingdom, Germany, 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. In recent years the artist has been the subject of exhibitions at P.S. 1 Contemporary Center, Long Island City (Concrete Blocks); The Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover (Twenty-Five Years of Wall Drawings, 1968-1993); and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford (Incomplete Cubes), which traveled to three art museums in The United States.

Sol LeWitt's most recent retrospective was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art in 2000. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Select Timeline

Select Exhibitions

• 1980 - Venice, Biennale 1968, 1972,
• 1982 - Kassel, Documenta 4, 5, 7
• 1984 - Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum
• 1986 - London, Tate Gallery
• 1989 - Berne, Kunsthalle, Sol Le Witt: Wall Drawings 1984-1988
• 1992 - The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Sol Le Witt: Drawings 1958-1992
• 1993 - Oxford, Museum of Modern Art, Sol Le Witt: Structures 1962-1993
• 1995 - New York, Gagosian Gallery
• 1996 - New York, Museum of Modern Art, Prints 1970-95
• 1996 - New York, Ace Gallery
• 1997 - New York, Paula Cooper Gallery
• 1998 - Los Angeles, Pace Wildenstein
• 1999 - Berlin, Kunst-Werke
• 2000 - San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art
• 2001 - Dusseldorf, Galerie Konrad Fischer
• 2001 - Madrid, La Caja Negra
• 2001 - Berlin, Galerie Thomas Schulte
• 2001 - Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum, Incomplete Open Cubes
• 2002 - Bremen, Neues Museum Weserburg, Kunst nach Kunst
• 2002 - Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Jim, Jonathan, Kenny, Frances and Sol
• 2002 - Munich, Galerie Albrecht
• 2003 - Dusseldorf, Galerie Konrad Fischer, Sol Le Witt
• 2003 - Chemnitz, Kunstsammlungen, Sol Le Witt
• 2003 - Graz, Neue Galerie, SUPPORT 1 - Die Neue Galerie als Sammlung
• 2003 - Bochum, Museum, Das Recht des Bildes - Judische Perspektiven in der modernen Kunst
• 2003 - Berlin, Galerie Fahnemann, Donald Judd,Sol Le Witt
• 2003 - Paris, FRAC, Les 20 ans des FRAC
• 2004 - Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, A MINIMAL FUTURE? ART AS OBJECT 1958-1968
• 2004 - Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, Das MoMA in Berlin
• 2004 - Los Angeles, UCLA Hammer Museum, The Last Picture Show
• 2004 - London, Lisson Gallery, Sol Le Witt: New York
• 2004 - Graz, Kamera Austria, Sol Le Witt: Photography
• 2004 - Graz, Kunsthaus, Sol Le Witt

Select Artwork

• Lines from the corner, Slides and the Center to Points on a Grid, - Color etching and aquatint
• Sol LeWitt From the Word "Art": Blue Lines to Four Corners, Green Lines to Four Sides, and Red Lines Between the Words "Art" on the Printed Page - 1972 Colored ink and pencil on paper
• Progressive Spiral, 1966
• Equivalent, 2002
• Windows, 1980

Quotes

• "All of the significant art of today stems from Conceptual art. This includes the art of installation, political, feminist and socially directed art."
• "Also, since art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced. Anyone who understands the work of art owns it. We all own the Mona Lisa."
• "During the '70s I was interested in words and meaning as a way of making art."
• "I became interested in making books, starting about 1965, when I did the Serial Project #1, deciding that I needed a small book to show how the work could be understood and how the system worked."
• "I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live."
• "I didn't want to save art - I respected the older artists too much to think art needed saving. But I knew it was finished, even though, at that time, I didn't know what I would do."
• "In my case, I used the elements of these simple forms - square, cube, line and color - to produce logical systems. Most of these systems were finite; that is, they were complete using all possible variations. This kept them simple."
• "Just as the development of earth art and installation art stemmed from the idea of taking art out of the galleries, the basis of my involvement with public art is a continuation of wall drawings."
• "The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance."
• "Unless you're involved with thinking about what you're doing, you end up doing the same thing over and over, and that becomes tedious and, in the end, defeating."

Publications

• Sol LeWitt: Incomplete Open Cubes - by Nicholas Baume, The MIT Press (February 19, 2001)
• Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective - by Gary Garrels, San Francisco Museum (June 15, 2000)
• Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings Allo Studio G7 - by Sol Lewitt, Damiani (December 11, 2006)
• Sol LeWitt - by Alicia Legg, Museum of Modern Art, New York; New Ed edition (January 1984)
• Autobiography: Sol LeWitt 1980 - by Sol Le Witt, Morgan & Morgan, Inc. (February 1981)
• Sol Lewitt Critical Texts - by Adachiara Zevi, Power House Books (July 1996)
• Sol Lewitt/Structures 1962-2003 (COMPLETE) - by Sol Lewitt (Author), Dave Hickey, PaceWildenstein; 1ST edition (2004)

Quick Facts

• Working in the 60's, Lewitt reduced his artmaking process to bare elements -- lines, curves, geometric shapes, primary colors and so on
• Although he fought being called a minimalist, his became a figurehead for the movement.
• Often, the pieces consist of sets of instructions on how to make the works. Here's one example of his instruction sets.
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York gave Sol LeWitt his first retrospective in 1978-79.
• He has been the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide since 1965.
• His prolific two and three-dimensional work ranges from Wall Drawings, over 1200 of which have been executed, to photographs and hundreds of works on paper and extends to structures in the form of towers, pyramids, geometric forms, and progressions.

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