Sol LeWitt was an American artist whose work provides a link between Minimalism and conceptual art. Being one of the main figures in the creation of the new aesthetic of the 60’s that was in a contrary to the Abstract Expressionism, Sol LeWitt defined conceptual art with his statement that the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.
Background
Sol LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1928. Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was the only child of Russian Jewish parents. His family lived in Hartford, Connecticut until his father, a doctor, died when Sol was six years old. Thereafter, LeWitt and his mother, a nurse, lived with his aunt in New Britain, Connecticut. Although LeWitt dismissed art-making as something that "most of us kids do like", as a young boy he displayed a real proclivity for art and, in particular, for creating "humorous" drawings.
Education
While still living in Hartford, his mother took him to art classes at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in which participants made art while listening to music. LeWitt recalled that, during one of the classes, his mother had made a spontaneous, black circle and had encouraged him to do the same. He attended Syracuse University as a compromise with his mother. Initially, LeWitt had difficulty adapting to the formal academic setting and found the curriculum to be overly rigid. During his later years of attendance, however, an infusion of new instructors gave the school a more flexible atmosphere. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts there in 1949.
Reluctant to fall into an industrial job like many workers in New Britain, LeWitt decided to pursue art as an act of rebellion. However, his mother wanted him to obtain a college degree. It was during that later period in his college career that LeWitt was introduced to printmaking. He won a $1000 award for his work in lithography from the Tiffany Foundation, which enabled him to spend time in Europe studying the work of the old masters.
In 1951, LeWitt was drafted for the Korean War and was assigned to the Special Services; his duties included making posters. While serving he visited shrines, temples, and gardens in Korea and Japan. After being discharged, LeWitt moved to New York and balanced classes at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now known as the School of Visual Arts) with a design internship at Seventeen magazine.
He joined the architectural office of I. M. Pei in 1955 as a graphic designer. What he learned from the architectural process convinced him to consider art as much an idea or a procedural blueprint that could be executed by others as a proprietary object of one person's making.
LeWitt continued to paint, but his lack of direction became a source of frustration to him. Leaving his job to devote his time entirely to art, LeWitt moved into a loft in SoHo and enrolled in drawing classes. He experimented with a wide range of subject matter, including the human figure, still life, interiors, and sketched copies of old master paintings. Inspiration came when he took a night position at The Museum of Modern Art. He met other artists, including Dan Flavin, Robert Mangold, and Robert Ryman, who were also searching for ideas beyond the pervasive yet, in their view, increasingly stale ideology of Abstract Expressionism. Viewing the Sixteen Americans exhibition at MoMA was a turning point for LeWitt, who conceived of a way to resolve the flatness of painting in the three-dimensional techniques and vibrant coloring of the new contemporary works.
Strongly influenced by the work of Jasper Johns and Eadweard Muybridge, LeWitt began to incorporate relief elements and series of moving figures into his painting as with “Run from 1961.” “Wall Structure, Blue” (1962) marks the artist's first move toward more simplified form, relying on color, shape and texture to make a bold statement. Combining the new pared-down compositions with an interest in three-dimensionality, LeWitt's work developed over the next few years into his first "open" structures, modular structures in black or white wood, or metal that repeated according to predetermined variations or mathematical permutations. These skeletal variations of the basic square or rectangle were the literal building blocks LeWitt used throughout his career. At his first solo exhibition at John Daniels Gallery in 1965, he exhibited a series of more complex open structures, which explored the manipulation of space with angled walls and irregular shapes.
Dissatisfied with the results of such visual experiments, LeWitt eventually returned to what he considered to be the fundamentals: he began to build measured structures according to an arbitrarily chosen ratio of 1:8:5. Using an accumulation of these structures, LeWitt completed “Serial Project #1 (ABCD)” in 1966, a large-format combination of cubes and rectangles that resumes the serial nature of his work inspired by Muybridge's photography. 1969 signaled LeWitt's foray into art theory; he wrote "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", (1969) and "Sentences on Conceptual Art", (1969), essays that fully articulated his intentions and perspective, also firmly situating him as the forerunner of a new movement: Conceptual art. At the same time, he had begun the process of distancing himself from Minimalism.
The first wall drawings originated with LeWitt's participation in the "Xerox Book" project curated by Seth Siegelaub. With this project, the conditions of artistic production were standardized, and the artists were given a series of "requirements" they were asked to follow. LeWitt's entry consisted of 24 variations of a line drawing, two of which were shown at Paula Cooper Gallery in 1968 as large-scale reproductions in pencil. LeWitt effectively freed line from its traditional roles and functions of describing contour, constructing space (as an orthogonal), and acting as the expressive signature of an artist's intention or "genius."
Representing a critical development in his work, the wall pieces focused on the overall concept and the rules of execution rather than the work itself, which would inevitably be painted over. These qualities, arguably the absolute "basics", are also evident in another notorious work of the same year, “Buried Cube Containing an Object of Importance but Little Value”, documented only in impersonal photographs. LeWitt later used photography to supplement a number of other projects including his autobiography, a collection of 124 photographs published in book form. LeWitt himself is rarely featured in these pictures; he most often refused to submit pictures of himself for publications, insisting that the focus should be on his work and not himself.
Although conservative critics tended to view LeWitt's work with derision and contempt, many underwent a conversion after viewing the 1978 retrospective held at The Museum of Modern Art. This well-curated exhibition led LeWitt himself to reconsider his work and explore new techniques. As a consequence, other shapes began to figure more prominently in his wall drawings, which also started to incorporate elements of Optical, or Op, Art. There were major changes in his personal life at this time as well, including his marriage to Carol Androgio in 1982 and their relocation to Italy.
In response to the heightened demand for public sculpture in the 1980s, LeWitt produced commissioned works using cinder blocks. These structures revisited the basic form of the cube subjected to different arrangements. The designs of his wall drawings became freer and more playful as LeWitt experimented with curving lines and blobs, as in the “Squiggly Brushstrokes” and “Wavy Lines” series. At the time of his death from complications of cancer in 2007, LeWitt was still at the height of his career.
Achievements
Sol LeWitt earned a place in the history of art for his leading role in the Conceptual movement. LeWitt was an ardent champion of the artistic community. His willingness to exchange his own work with nearly anyone, whether amateur or well-established artist, encouraged a kind of support network in the visual arts. It also enabled him to amass a large collection from local and international artists.
Alternate Not-Straight Lines (From the Right Side) and Broken Lines (From the Left Side) of Random Length
Conspiracy
Vertical Lines, Not Touching
Corner Piece No. 2
Wall Drawing #1136
Untitled (Ribbons)
Stars 5 Pointed
Untitled (from 4x4x4)
Untitled
Brushstrokes
Three Stacked Domes
Complex Forms
Stars 8 Pointed
Untitled (from Composite Series)
Lines From Corners, Sides & the Centre, to Points on a Grid
Irregular Vertical and Horizontal Bands of Color Superimposed
Irregular Arcs, Bands, Loops
Serial Project (Set B)
Untitled (Irregular Form)
Incomplete Cube 10-4
Two Centimeter Wavy Bands in Colors
Untitled
8 Part Cube
A Piece of Manhattan
Cube Structure Based on Five Modules
Untitled
Title Corner piece #4
Lines in All Directions
Blue Vertical
Irregular Horizontal Bands of Equal Width Starting at Bottom
Wall Drawing #260
Modular cube. Base
Wall Floor Piece #1
9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Half Off
Summer (Collage)
Irregular Grid
Model for Brick Structure (four domes and a sphere)
Color Bands (Wadsworth Portfolio)
Horizontal Wavy Lines
Lines in Four Directions
Bands of Color in Four Directions
Hanging Complex Form
Wall Drawing #522
Pyramid #10
Structure with Three Towers
Serial Project #1 ABCD
Arcs and Bands in Colors
Irregular Form
Irregular Form
Irregular Grid
Standing Open Structure Black
Buried Cube Containing an Object of Importance but Little Value
Horizontal Colour Bands and Vertical Colour Bands I
Arcs from Four Corners
Not Straight Brushstrokes in All Directions
Nine-Sided Figure
Arcs From Sides or Corners, Grids & Circles
The Location of 14 Points
Horizontal Lines of Color
Untitled Structure
Untitled
Linear Composition
Lines in Four Directions in Flowers
Wavy Lines with Black Border
Horizontal Bands with Colors Superimposed
Bands of Lines One Inch Wide in Four Directions in Black and Gray
Squiggly Brushstrokes (Olive)
Views
His belief in the artist as a generator of ideas was instrumental in the transition from the modern to the postmodern era. Conceptual art, expounded by LeWitt as an intellectual, pragmatic act, added a new dimension to the artist's role that was distinctly separate from the romantic nature of Abstract Expressionism. His Minimalist approach, which emphasized simplicity and clarity, was embraced by artists like Eva Hesse and Frank Stella.
Believing that the idea itself could be the work of art and displace the artist into the position of a generator of that idea, LeWitt considered creation as an intellectual and pragmatic act. Conceiving of a work is the only artist’s obligation, then he can either delegate the production to others or can choose to even never make it at all.
Quotations:
"An architect doesn't go off with a shovel and dig his foundation and lay every brick. He's still an artist."
“When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.”
Membership
He was a founder of Printed Matter, a nonprofit organization that promotes the book arts and now maintains an exhibition space in Chelsea.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Sol Lewitt had a pivotal role for Lisson Gallery, especially in the early days. He and I worked intensively together embarking on projects, exhibitions at the gallery and the production of work. I also assisted Sol in building his extraordinary collection of living artists. He was exemplary as a model artist in terms of his attitude, his openness, generosity and fair handedness. His spirit lives on with us and is deeply embedded in the culture of the gallery.
Interests
Artists
Jasper Johns and Eadweard Muybridge
Connections
Sol married Carol Androgio in 1982.
Father:
Abraham LeWitt
Mother:
Sophie LeWitt
Spouse:
Carol Androgio
Daughter:
Eva Lewitt
Daughter:
Sophie LeWitt
Friend:
Robert Ryman
LeWitt’s co-worker at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Robert Ryman is an American painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art.
Friend:
Dan Flavin
LeWitt’s co-worker at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist.
Friend:
Lucy R. Lippard
LeWitt’s co-worker at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lucy R. Lippard is an internationally known writer, art critic, activist and curator from the United States.
Friend:
Robert Mangold
Sol LeWitt’s co-worker at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Robert Mangold is an American minimalist artist.
