Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt was an influential American artist known for his pioneering contributions to conceptual art and minimalism. Born in 1928 to Russian Jewish immigrants in Hartford, Connecticut, he demonstrated an early talent for art and pursued formal education at Syracuse University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, LeWitt moved to Manhattan and began to move away from painting towards three-dimensional sculpture, drawing inspiration from geometry and architecture.
His first major exhibitions in the 1960s garnered critical acclaim, positioning him as a significant figure in the New York art scene. LeWitt's philosophical approach to art emphasized ideas over physical materials, as articulated in his influential writings such as "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" and the manifesto "Sentences on Conceptual Art." He believed that art should be characterized by clarity and simplicity, allowing for a deeper aesthetic experience.
In addition to his artistic endeavors, LeWitt was a dedicated mentor in the art community and taught at several prestigious institutions. He spent part of his life in Italy, where he continued to create and engage with the arts until his passing in 2007. His legacy remains significant, demonstrating the profound complexity that can arise from minimalist forms and emphasizing the importance of conceptual thought in the creation of art.
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Sol LeWitt
Artist
- Born: September 9, 1928
- Birthplace: Hartford, Connecticut
- Died: April 8, 2007
- Place of death: New York, New York
In the 1960’s, LeWitt redirected the field of abstract art into conceptual art, which elevates the content of the artist’s mind above the artwork.
Early Life
Sol LeWitt (sawl leh-WIHT) was the only child of Russian Jewish immigrants in Hartford, Connecticut. His father, Abraham, born in Turkey in 1871, was originally an engineer but became a physician in 1900 with a medical degree from Cornell University. He was involved in the founding of Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford in 1923 and subsequently served as its medical chief of staff. After he died on August 11, 1934, his widow, Sophie, a nurse, and an aunt raised LeWitt in New Britain, Connecticut. LeWitt showed an early aptitude for art, and as a teenager he studied at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. After graduating from New Britain High School in 1945, he entered Syracuse University, where he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1949. He continued to study traditional art, first for a semester as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, then on his own in Europe.
LeWitt was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951. Even though the Korean War was on, he saw no combat, but he was stationed in California, Japan, and Korea, mostly designing recruitment and propaganda posters. He moved to Manhattan when he left the Army in 1953, briefly attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, then worked until 1954 as a designer for Seventeen magazine. During this period, the sequential photography of Eadweard Muybridge began to influence him. In 1955 and 1956, LeWitt created graphic architectural designs for I. M. Pei, and then LeWitt worked odd jobs until 1960, when he found employment at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Life’s Work
LeWitt’s first major exhibit was in 1963 at St. Mark’s Church, and his first solo exhibit was in 1965 at the John Daniels Gallery, both in were chosen. With immediate praise and support from critics who appreciated radical art forms, he soon became influential within the New York art world. Because he had shifted from painting toward sculpture in the 1950’s, his exhibited works were mostly three-dimensional, based as much on geometry as on any artistic tradition.
Besides creating art itself, LeWitt also assured himself a lasting place in the philosophy of art by writing about conceptualist theory. In 1967, he published “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” which he followed in 1968 with the important thirty-five-point manifesto, “Sentences on Conceputal Art.” His theory of the significance and the production of art is mostly subjectivist but also emotivist, in Robin G. Collingwood’s sense that genuine art exists only as ideas or feelings in the mind or heart of the artist rather than as the physical material the artist may put forward for anyone to see. Conceptual art is concerned mainly with clarity, openness, and simplicity, which is often associated with minimalism. Art objects, LeWitt believed, are essentially just basic structures without the admixture of complicated emotions, meanings, or cognitive aspects. Such structures are primarily mental but may also take physical form.
LeWitt taught from 1964 to 1967 at MOMA, from 1967 to 1968 at Cooper Union, and from 1969 to 1970 at the School of Visual Arts and New York University. In 1971, he began to divide his time between New York and Italy, and in 1975 he bought a house in Spoleto, Italy. He married Carol Androccio in 1982, with whom he had two daughters, Sofia and Eva. In the late 1980’s, they moved to Chester, Connecticut, where he was an active member of Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek, a Reform synagogue whose building he codesigned with architect Stephen Lloyd.
LeWitt’s generosity within the artistic community was legendary. He freely made himself available as a mentor or facilitator for other artists. He distrusted and avoided the limelight, not only because he naturally was modest and self-effacing but also because he believed that the public should focus on artistic products rather than on the lives of artists. LeWitt died in 2007 at the age of seventy-eight of complications from cancer.
Significance
LeWitt’s artwork and concepts demonstrate that the simple is not always simplistic, that the illogical is often logical, and that minimal creations can give rise to complex aesthetic appreciation, reflection, and expression. His art might be regarded as having emerged more or less reasonably in the wake of Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, and Kazimir Malevich, but he denied the influence of any tradition. His direct influences were contemporary, mostly people he knew personally, such as the artists Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Dan Flavin and the critic Lucy Lippard. LeWitt’s creativity derived more from practical architecture and design than from what is usually called fine art. Moreover, LeWitt cited musical forms, especially Baroque forms in the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, as having inspired many of his ideas for paintings, drawings, sculptures, structures, and installations.
Bibliography
Cross, Susan, and Denise Markonish, eds. Sol LeWitt: One Hundred Views. North Adams, Mass.: Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 2009. An exhibit catalog that considers LeWitt’s place in the history and the development of abstract art.
Garrels, Gary, et al., eds. Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000. A detailed exhibit catalog and an insightful, multifaceted appraisal of LeWitt’s life, work, and influence.
Kimmelman, Michael. “Sol LeWitt, Master of Conceptualism, Dies at Seventy-Eight.” The New York Times, April 9, 2007. Extensive obituary that sets LeWitt’s conceptualist and minimalist theories in the context of other movements in twentieth century American art.
Lippard, Lucy R., ed. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. New York: Praeger, 1973. Contains LeWitt’s “Sentences on Conceptual Art” and provides fascinating vignettes, mostly from insiders, of the era and milieu in which LeWitt evolved as a major force in American art.