Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), American artist, one of the leaders of the movement known as conceptual art. He used the term conceptual art for his works to emphasize the precedence of the artist’s ideas over the art object itself. LeWitt is also sometimes associated with the minimalist artists, who created works with simple shapes and textures; LeWitt, however, objected to being labeled a minimalist.

Born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Hartford, Connecticut, LeWitt graduated from Syracuse University in 1949. After serving in the United States Army from 1951 to 1952, he worked as a graphic artist for Chinese American architect I. M. Pei. While teaching at various art schools in the mid- to late 1960s, LeWitt began creating and exhibiting his first sculptures.

Much of LeWitt’s work used repeated shapes with systematic variations, a technique known as serial art. In All Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes (1974, Saatchi Collection, London), for example, he assembled 122 open cubes made of wood and painted white on a 3 m by 5.5 m (10 ft by 18 ft) base. LeWitt has also worked with other geometric structures, including, in the 1980s, pyramids and obelisks. His public sculpture Monument to the Missing Jews (1987, Platz der Republik, Hamburg) was constructed of large black blocks and was meant to express the absence of the Jewish community.

In the late 1960s LeWitt began creating large drawings on walls, often with the help of assistants who executed the drawings from his instructions. The early wall drawings were in graphite, but those of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s increasingly employed ink or paint, and color. The bands and arcs of bold color give the drawings the presence of murals. Many of these drawings were temporary, painted over when an exhibition ended; a simple diagram and the instructions for making the work are all that remain.

In addition to sculptures and wall drawings, LeWitt created prints, drawings, and books of photographs. He also wrote essays and articles, including his influential “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967). In 1979 LeWitt collaborated with American choreographer Lucinda Childs and American composer Philip Glass on a multimedia piece titled Dance, for which he provided a film background.