2000
Edition 38 - Essegi Editions
Sol LeWitt Book-artwork in an edition of 90 copies, 34 x 61 x 3 cm.
Each book is signed and numbered in the colophon and consists of 15 monoprint sheets, two of which (sheet no. 1 and sheet no. 4) are also signed. Second open box with all 15 sheets arranged to form the complete artwork.
Sol LeWitt, born Solomon LeWitt (Hartford, September 9, 1928 – New York, April 8, 2007), was an American artist associated with various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism.
He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. His mother encouraged his artistic talents by allowing him to attend a course at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. In 1949, after earning a BFA from Syracuse University, he traveled to Europe, where he studied the works of the great masters firsthand. Starting in 1950, he served in the Korean War, first in California, then in Japan, and finally in Korea.
In 1953, LeWitt moved to New York, opening a studio in the Lower East Side, in the old Ashkenazi Jewish settlement on Hester Street. During this period, he studied at the School of Visual Arts and worked for Seventeen magazine.
In 1955, he worked for a year as a graphic designer in the office of architect Ieoh Ming Pei. Around the same time, he became familiar with the work of late 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, whose studies on sequences and locomotion became one of his early influences. These experiences, along with a basic-level job as a nighttime receptionist and clerk at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1960, had a significant impact on his later work. At MoMA, LeWitt’s colleagues included artists like Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, Gene Beery, and Robert Mangold, as well as future art critic and writer Lucy Lippard.
In 1960, the now-famous exhibition “Sixteen Americans” (curated by Dorothy Canning Miller, featuring works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella) created a wave of excitement and discussion within the artist community, deeply influencing LeWitt. He also became friends with Hanne Darboven, Eva Hesse, and Robert Smithson.
In the late 1960s, he taught at various schools in New York, including New York University and the School of Visual Arts.
In 1970, LeWitt left New York for Spoleto, Italy, where he set up his studio in the historic center and settled on the slopes of Monteluco, initially in a hermitage owned by Marilena Bonomo, and later in a tower house he purchased near the church of San Pietro. After returning to the United States in the late 1980s, he made Chester, Connecticut, his primary residence.
He passed away in 2007 in New York at the age of 78.
