Sol LeWitt

  • Sol LeWitt, The Location of Lines. Lines from the Midpoints of Lines, 1975 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Sol LeWitt, Tondo Stars, 2002 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Sol LeWitt, Bands Not Straight in Four Directions (multicoloured), 1999 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Sol LeWitt, The Location of Lines. Lines from the Midpoints of Lines, 1975
  • Biography
    View works. Sol LeWitt, Tondo 6 (8 point star) (2002)
    Sol LeWitt, Tondo 6 (8 point star) (2002)
    View works

     Sol LeWitt was an American artist most recognized for his contributions to Conceptualism and Minimalism. Born in Connecticut in 1928, LeWitt went on to study fine art at the University of Syracuse before serving in the Korean War. He moved to New York City in 1953, where he pursued his interest in design alongside his fine art studies at the School of Visual Arts. An entry-level job at the Museum of Modern Art exposed him to fellow artists Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. LeWitt then started to move away from the dominant Abstract Expressionist aesthetic of the 1950s and became more concerned with Conceptualism, making the idea his central focus. The open cube became a recurring form in his work and developed into his three-dimensional structures, his cement cubes, and his infamous geometric wall paintings. LeWitt's work has been exhibited extensively and internationally, and he has had major retrospectives and museum shows at MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; and the Kunsthalle Bern. His work can be found in important museum collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; Tate Modern in London; the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

  • Selected Exhibitions

    1964 Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY

    1965 John Daniels Gallery, New York, NY* – First solo exhibition

    1966 Abstract Artist's Invitational, Riverside Museum, New York, NY 

    1966 Annual Exhibition 1966: Contemporary Sculpture and Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

    1966 Art in Process, Finch College Museum, New York, NY 

    1966 Multiplicity, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, MA 

    1966 Primary Structures, Jewish Museum, New York, NY 

    1967 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA  

    1967 Sculpture Annual, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 

    1967 Serial Art, Finch College Museum, New York, NY 

    1968 Documenta IV, Kassel, Germany 

    1968 Prospect '68, Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, Germany Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany 

    1968 The Art of the Real, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

    1968 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 

    1969 Art By Telephone, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL 

    1969 Between Object and Environment, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of

    1969 Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 

    1969 Konzeption/Conception, Stadtisch Museum, Schloss Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany 

    1969 Sculptures and Wall Drawings, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany

    1970 10th Biennale, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo 

    1970 69th American Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago, IL 

    1970 Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Netherlands

    1970 Information, Museum of Modern Art, New York 

    1970 Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, CA

    1970 Walls, Jewish Museum, New York 

    1972 Arcs, from corners & sides, circles, & grids and all their combinations, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    1972 Lithographs and Wall Drawings, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Halifax, Canada

    1973 L’Attico Galleria, Rome, Italy

    1976 200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

    1976 Sol LeWitt/Donald Judd, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

    1984 Wall Drawings, Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    1985 Pyramid: A Wall Drawing by Sol LeWitt, Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA

    1993 Structures 1962–1993, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK; Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany; Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, Leeds City Art Gallery, UK; The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, UK; Neues Museum Weserburg, Bremen, Germany

    1994 Mapping, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

    1994 Under Development, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL

    1996 Prints: 1970–1995, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, USA; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, USA; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, USA

    1996 Two Works by Sol LeWitt, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands

    1997 100 Cubes, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland; Kärntner Landesgalerie, Klagenfurt, Austria; Prague City Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic; Stadtliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Germany

    1997 Invisible Light, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK

    1999 Afterimage: Drawing Through Process, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA

    1999 The American Century: Art & Culture - Part 2 1950 - 2000, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 

    2000 Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA

    2000 Wall Drawings, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy

    2001 Atelier del Bosco di Villa Medici, Rome, Italy

    2001 Noncomposition, fifteen case studies, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

    2001 Right Here, Right Now, Los Angeles International, Los Angeles, CA 

    2002 An American Legacy, A Gift to New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 

    2002 La Mate Rialità dell’Esistenza: XI Biennale Internazionale di Scultura, Carrara, Toscana, Italy

    2003 LeWitt’s LeWitt and Selections from the Collection of Sol and Carol LeWitt, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, USA

    2003 Wall Drawings, Gouaches, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome, Italy

    2003 Work Ethic, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; Des Moines Art Center, IA; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH 

    2004 A Minimal Future? Art As Object 1958-1968, MOCA at California Plaza, Los Angeles 

    2004 Recent Works, Katonah Museum of Art, USA

    2004 The 179th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, National Academy Museum, New York 

    2004 Traces: Body and Idea in Contemporary Art, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan 

    2005 Variations on a Theme, Sol LeWitt & Paula Robison, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA 

    2007 Lines, Grids, Stains, Words: Minimal Art Drawings from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Spain

    2008 21: Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum, NY

    2008 A Wall Drawing Retrospective, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA

    2008 Collecting Collections: Highlights of the Permanent Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

    2008 Focus: Sol LeWitt, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

    2008 Monumental Drawings, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy

    2009 Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

    2009 The Endless Renaissance, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL 

    2011 21 Americans, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, New York, NY 

    2011 An Exchange With Sol LeWitt, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA

    2011 Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964 – 1977, Art Institute of Chicago, IL

    2011 Multiplicity, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

    2012 Colours, Museum Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    2012 Der Raum der Linie, Museum Wiesbaden, Germany

    2012 Sol LeWitt: L’Artista E I Suoi Artisti, Museo Madre, Napoli, Italy

    2012 Wall Drawings from 1968 to 2007, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France

    2013 Sol LeWitt Collectionneur: Un Artiste et Ses Artistes, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France

    2013 When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013, Ca’ Corner della Regina, Fondazione Prada, Venice, Italy

    2014 Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing #370, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

    2015 America is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

    2015 Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

    2016 Excitement, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    2016 Musicircus. Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou Collection, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris, France 

    2017 It’s just a beginning, Galleria Nazionale, d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy

    2018 By Hand: Sol LeWitt, Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT

    2018 MINIMALISM: SPACE. LIGHT. OBJECT, National Gallery Singapore, Singapore

    2018 Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings: Expanding a Legacy, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

    2019 Sol LeWitt: Structures, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA

    2020 Sol LeWitt, Reykjavík Art Museum, Reykjavík, Iceland 

    2021 Closer to Life: Drawings and Works on Paper in the Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY

    2021 Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT; Williams College Museum of Art, Williams, MA

    2023 A Field Guide to Photography and Media, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

    2023 Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

  • Works

  • Art Fairs