Sol LeWitt at the Crown Point Press studio, San Francisco 1997. Sol LeWitt, who was born in Connecticut in 1928, is one of the most influential artists of our time. In the catalog for his 1978 retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Bernice Rose, Curator of Drawings, says that his innovative work drawing directly on walls “was as important for drawing as Pollock’s use of the drip technique had been for painting in the 1950s.”
Cube Structures Based on Five Modules, 1971-74 Although he has worked extensively in drawing and printmaking, he is usually considered to be primarily a sculptor. LeWitt’s most characteristic sculpture works are based on connected open cubes and have titles like “Modular Wall Structure” and “Double Modular Cube.” Because he works with modules and systems, and his early wall drawings are based on grids, he is sometimes described as a Minimal artist, but his work, especially his recent work, is usually colorful and often quite complex. It is also optimistic and beautiful.
Wall Drawing #652 LeWitt began exhibiting in New York in the early 1960s and since then has had many exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world, including the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Holland; the Kunsthalle, Berne, Switzerland; the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, the Netherlands; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
WALL DRAWING at Crown Point Press In addition to his 1978 major retrospective, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has given him a print retrospective in 1995. A large retrospective of wall drawings, sculpture, and works on paper is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through May, 2000, and will travel to Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.