Sol LeWitt

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Conceptualist pioneer Sol LeWitt dies aged 78

By Sadie Gray
Published: 10 April 2007

Sol LeWitt, the American artist who helped establish Minimalism and
Conceptualism as major movements of the post-war era, died yesterday in New
York after complications from cancer. He was 78.

LeWitt was the opposite of the celebrity artist and tried to suppress media
interest by refusing to pose for pictures or give interviews. He turned down
awards and particularly disliked having his photograph published in newspaper
and magazines.

LeWitt's deceptively simple geometric sculptures and drawings and brightly
coloured wall paintings established him as a high priest of modern American
art. Much of his art was based on variations of spheres, triangles and other
basic geometric shapes.

His sculptures were often based around rows or stacks of open, connected cubes
and used precise, measured formats and carefully developed variations.

He gave them titles such as Modular Wall Structure and Double Modular Cube, and
some were huge towers or pyramids that were displayed outdoors.

Joanna Marsh, a curator at the Wadsworth Athen-eum in Hartford, Connecticut,
where LeWitt was born in 1928, said: "It is not an overstatement to say that he
was one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century. His work
has had a profound influence on future generations of artists and will continue
to have an impact."

In the catalogue for his 1978 retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art,
the curator of drawings Bernice Rose said his drawing directly onto museum or
gallery walls "was as important for drawing as Pollock's use of the drip
technique had been for painting in the 1950s".

LeWitt was born to Russian immigrants. His father died when he was aged six and
he was brought up by his mother and an aunt.

He completed an art program at Syracuse University in 1949, telling a reporter
years later that he studied art because he "didn't know what else to do".
LeWitt then spent two years in the US Army during the Korean War but he never
went into battle.

In 1953 he moved to New York, just as abstract expressionism was gaining public
recognition. He held a variety of short-term jobs, including working as a night
receptionist at the Museum of Modern Art.

His first solo art show was at the John Daniels Gallery in New York in 1965 and
he taught at several New York art schools. By the mid-1960s, LeWitt had begun
to experiment with wall drawings, an idea which was considered radical because
he knew they would eventually be painted over.

The drawing was done by a team of assistants following instructions based on an
idea outlined in a diagrammatic sketch.

"An architect doesn't go off with a shovel and dig his foundation and lay every
brick. He's still an artist," said LeWitt, explaining why he did not do them
himself.

"When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the
planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory
affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."

He produced some 1,200 wall drawings throughout his career. The idea behind
them was to merge the drawing with the architecture, and call into question
ideas about permanence, value and conservation.

But his first wall drawing, part of a 1968 display in New York, was so striking
that the gallery owner could not bring herself to have it painted over as
LeWitt had intended. She insisted that he did it himself, which he did without
hesitation.

LeWitt lived for much of the 1980s in Spoleto, Italy, before returning to
Connecticut in the late 1980s. He is survived by a wife, Carol, and two
daughters.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2437331.ece