Sol LeWitt
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Regarded as an originator of both Minimal and Conceptual art, Sol LeWitt’s artistic practice explores the relationship between art and space through systemized patterns and lines.
Sol LeWitt (1928 – 2007) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and died on April 8, 2007 in New York City at the age of 78. His two and three-dimensional work is of all sizes, ranging from works on paper to wall drawings and monumental outdoor structures. “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art,” he wrote in his 1967 essay “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” Lewitt met Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin and Robert Mangold while working as a bookseller at the MoMA gift shop in New York. His interest in writing and artist’s books led to his co-founding, with Lucy Lippard, of Printed Matter, a non-profit organization dedicated to small press publishing. Lewitt’s first retrospective exhibition was presented in 1970 by the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, followed by a major mid-career retrospective at MOMA in New York in 1978.
LeWitt’s works are in numerous public collections including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Centre National d’Art Moderne Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Turin’s Castello di Rivoli; the Moderna Museet Stockholm; and the Tate Gallery, London. In November 2007 the Centre Pompidou-Metz organized a retrospective of the artist’s wall drawings, “Sol LeWitt. Wall Drawings from 1968 to 2007.” A year later, “Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective” opened at MassMOCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), and will remain on view for 25 years.