Product Code Database
Solomon " Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism.McNay, Michael. " Obituary: Sol LeWitt: American artist whose treatment of forms and colours defied critical analysis". The Guardian, April 11, 2007. Accessed April 17, 2011.
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.
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 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, and Frank Stella 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, and Robert Smithson.
LeWitt taught at several New York schools, including New York University and the School of Visual Arts, 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.Neda Ulaby. " Sol LeWitt: conceptual art pioneer dies at 78." All Things Considered, NPR, April 9, 2007. Accessed April 17, 2011.
Following early experimentation LeWitt settled on a standard version for his modular cubes, circa 1965: the negative space between the beams would stand to the positive space 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. Sol LeWitt: Concrete Block, December 17, 1999 - February 27, 2000. MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Accessed April 17, 2011. 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. Sol LeWitt on the Roof: Splotches, Whirls and Twirls, April 26, 2005 – October 30, 2005 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
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.Gareth Harris and Hanne Cecilie Gulstad (January 1, 2014), Europe is set for a summer of big sculpture The Art Newspaper.
Since he created a work of art for Paula Cooper Gallery's inaugural show in 1968, Sol LeWitt, September 3 - October 10, 2013 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. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG) (2006) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. 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'. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 1211, 2006 MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA.
In Wall Drawing #122, first installed in 1972 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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, New York, which systematically runs through all possible two-part combinations of arcs and lines. Sol LeWitt: Arcs and Lines, May 7 - August 26, 2011 Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. 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. Sol LeWitt, September 11 - October 30, 2010 Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Brussels.
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, Masaccio, 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. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 1152: Whirls and twirls (Met), 2005 MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA.
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. Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 1247: Scribbles 7. (PW), 2007 MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. The largest scribble wall drawing, Wall Drawing #1268, is on view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
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 Swiss Re headquarters Americas in Armonk, New York, the Atlanta City Hall, Atlanta ( Wall Drawing #581, 1989/90); the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC ( Wall Drawing #1103, 2003); the Conrad Hotels, New York ( Loopy Doopy (Blue and Purple), 1999); the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo ( Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG), 2006/2010); Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG) (2006/2010) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. 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, Cambridge ( Bars of Colors Within Squares (MIT), 2007); the Embassy of the United States in Berlin; the Wadsworth Atheneum; and John Pearson's House, Oberlin, Ohio. The artist's last public wall drawing, Wall Drawing #1259: Loopy Doopy (Springfield) (2008), is at the United States Courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts (designed by architect Moshe Safdie). 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, New York, in 2013.
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.
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.
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. Sol LeWitt: Lines in Four Directions in Flowers Philadelphia Museum of Art.Chelsea Allison (June 5, 2012), The Supernaturalists: Fresh Ellsworth Kelly and Sol LeWitt Exhibitions Bloom on the East Coast Vogue.
In 2004, Six Curved Walls sculpture was installed on the hillside slope of Crouse College on Syracuse University 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.
The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague 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, 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. Sol LeWitt, September 15 - October 23, 2004. Lisson Gallery, London. 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. 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". A major LeWitt retrospective was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2000. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
From April 26–October 30, 2005, the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited Sol LeWitt on the Roof: Splotches, Whirls, and Twirls.
In 2006, LeWitt's Drawing Series... was displayed at and was devoted to the 1970s drawings by the . Drafters and assistants drew directly on the walls using graphite, colored pencil, crayon, and chalk. 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. Holland Cotter, "Now in Residence: Walls of Luscious Austerity" New York Times, December 4, 2008. 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 ( Concrete Blocks); MoMA PS1 Exhibition Page 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. At the time of his death, LeWitt had just organized a retrospective of his work at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio. At Naples Sol LeWitt. L'artista e i suoi artisti opened at the Museo Madre on December 15, 2012, running until April 1, 2013.
From June 30, 2014–January 28, 2018, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing #370, a wall composition designed for a short period of time. At the end of the exhibition the wall composition was painted over.
|
|
