American Masters

Sol Lewitt

United States of America 1928–2007

Sol LeWitt was born on 9 September 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut. He studied Fine Arts at Syracuse University, New York, from 1945 to 1949. In 1953, after serving with the US Army in Japan and Korea, he moved to New York, supporting himself with various casual jobs, including a period in the offices of the architect I.M. Pei. He worked for some time at the book counter and reception desk at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, between 1960 and 1965, and held his first solo exhibition at the Daniels Gallery, New York, in 1965. In 1966 he participated in the landmark exhibition Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in New York. In the late 1960s he held regular solo exhibitions with Dwan Gallery, New York and Los Angeles, and with Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf. He also participated in a number of important survey exhibitions of Minimal and Conceptual art, including Minimal Art organised by the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, in 1968, When Attitude Becomes Form: Works–Concepts–Processes–Situations at the Kunsthalle, Berne, in 1969, and Information at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1970.

LeWitt received his first solo museum exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum in 1970, and has had exhibitions in museums around the world almost yearly since that time. LeWitt was given a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1978, and a retrospective of his wall drawings at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1984. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art organised a comprehensive retrospective covering five decades of the artist’s work in 2000, which toured to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, during 2000–01. Since the early 1970s LeWitt has exhibited regularly with John Weber Gallery, New York, and also with Lisson Gallery, London. He lived and worked in Chester, Connecticut, and Spoleto, Italy, and died on 8 April 2007 in New York City.

See more works by this artist in the NGA collection