Sol LeWitt
(September 9, 1928 - April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to
various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism. LeWitt
rose to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and
"structures" (a term he preferred instead of "sculptures") but was
prolific in a wide range of media including drawing, printmaking,
and painting.
He has been the subject of hundreds
of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world since
1965. 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 towers,
pyramids, geometric forms, and progressions. These works range in
size from gallery-sized installations to monumental outdoor pieces.
Sol LeWitt’s frequent use of open, modular structures originates
from the cube, a form that influenced the artist’s thinking from the
time that he first became an artist.
LeWitt was born in Hartford,
Connecticut to a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia. After
receiving a BFA from Syracuse University in 1949, 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. LeWitt moved to New York City in the 1950s
and studied at the School of Visual Arts while also pursuing 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 work of the late 19th-century
photographer Eadweard Muybridge, whose 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
(MoMA) in New York, would influence LeWitt's later work.
At the MoMA, LeWitt’s co-workers
included fellow artists Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, and Robert
Mangold. Curator Dorothy Canning 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. In 1966, he particpated in the seminal "Primary
Structures" exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York submitting an
untitled, open modular cube of 9 units. Interviewed in 1993 about
those years LeWitt remarked, “I decided I would make color or form
recede and proceed in a three-dimensional way.”
