Sol LeWitt
Untitled
1972

About the Item

Sol LeWitt was an iconic American artist whose work helped to establish both Minimalism and Conceptual Art. LeWitt’s practice was based primarily within his own intellect, establishing a rubric of formal instructions which his assistants followed to create the works. Some of the artist’s most integral pieces are his Wall Drawings, in which he explored myriad variations of applying drawn lines onto walls. “When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art,” he wrote in his seminal 1967 essay Paragraphs on Conceptual Art. Born Solomon LeWitt on September 9, 1928 in Hartford, CT, he received his BFA from Syracuse University before serving in the United States Army during the Korean War. After the war, he moved to New York, where he attended illustration classes and worked as a graphic designer for several magazines. During the 1950s, while experimenting with painting during the day and working nights at The Museum of Modern Art he met the artists Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, and Robert Mangold. By the early 1960s, influenced by a combination of Robert Rauschenberg, Josef Albers, and Eadweard Muybridge, LeWitt had developed his uniquely cerebral approach to making art. The artist would go on to cofound the artist book nonprofit Printed Matter, Inc. in 1976 with writer Lucy Lippard. Over the course of his career he would have a profound influence on both his peers and younger artists including Frank Stella and Eva Hesse. LeWitt died on April 8, 2007 in New York, NY. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, NY, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Creator:
Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007, American)
Creation Year:
1972
Dimensions:
Height: 81 in (205.74 cm)Width: 40 in (101.6 cm)
Medium:
Linen,Archival Paper
Period:
1970-1979
Condition:
Gallery Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU8512553512
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Sol LeWitt

While New York City’s art scene in the 1950s and ’60s revolved around Abstract Expressionism, multidisciplinary artist Sol LeWitt paved an alternative path, creating a prolific output of work in the genres of minimalism and, later, Conceptual art.

While LeWitt is perhaps best known for his immense “wall drawings,” he created work in a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture. (However, in a characteristic rebuttal of canonical art history, he referred to these pieces as “structures.”) He also produced several texts, including the seminal Sentences on Conceptual Art (1969).

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1928, LeWitt received a BFA from Syracuse University before going to work as a graphic designer for the renowned architect I.M. Pei. He would later work at the book counter at the Museum of Modern Art, where his colleagues included fellow artists. LeWitt’s early exposure to architecture may well have had outsize influence on his subsequent career: He was known for the geometric nature of his work, specifically his fastidious, near-obsessive treatment of the cube, which he rendered repeatedly in various ways throughout his paintings, structures and wall drawings.

In the 1960s, LeWitt showed in several group exhibitions throughout New York and also began to experiment with three-dimensional structures, most modular riffs on the cube shape. His work was included in “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art,” curated by Mel Bochner, another leading exponent of Conceptualism.

Later, LeWitt debuted his now-iconic wall drawings, creating work directly on the walls of galleries and show spaces, beginning with pioneering gallerist Paula Cooper’s inaugural show in 1968. The wall drawings became a prime example of LeWitt’s philosophical approach to art, with their installation often carried out by museum staff or curators following precise instructions from the artist.

“The idea,” the artist once said, “becomes a machine that makes the art.” LeWitt continued to produce work until his death in 2007.

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