Sol LeWitt

American, 1928–2007

BiographyLeWitt was born 9 September 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut. He received a B.F.A. in 1949 from Syracuse University. After serving in the U.S. Army in Japan and Korea in 1951-52, he moved to New York in 1952. From 1960 to 1965 he worked at the Museum of Modern Art, primarily at the Information and Book Sales Desk, and from 1964 to 1971 he also taught part-time at different art schools in New York City. LeWitt had his first solo exhibition at the Daniels Gallery, New York, in 1965. In 1966 he had the first of a series of solo exhibitions at the Dwan Gallery, and in 1968 he had five solo exhibitions at different galleries in the United States and Europe. LeWitt also participated in a number of significant Minimalist and Conceptual Art group exhibitions during the late sixties and early seventies, including Primary Structures, at the Jewish Museum, New York, 1966; When Attitude Becomes Form, at the Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, 1969; and Information, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970.

LeWitt's use of the open cube dates to 1965, and by 1966 he had begun combining the modular cubes in various serial forms, as he described in his 1966 statement "Serial Project No. 1 (ABCD)." LeWitt further elaborated his ideas concerning the use of relatively simple units or modules combined according to a present plan in his 1967 "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," and his 1969 "Sentences on Conceptual Art." In 1968 LeWitt also began to develop the principles used in his wall drawings, and he described these principles in statements published in 1970 and 1971.

In his work since the seventies, LeWitt has continued to explore different forms of drawing and sculpture based on the use of a predetermined plan or process of application.

U.S. Representative in Sao Paulo Bienale in 1996 (Wadsworth Atheneum, Andrea Miller-Keller, curator)