Bio
Sol LeWitt was an American artist who is known as a founding member of both Minimalism and Conceptual Art in the 1960s. His iconic Sculpture Series of open, modular cubes as well as for his writings have made him one of the most enduring influences in contemporary art. “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art,” he wrote in his seminal 1967 essay “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” describing a movement away from earlier forms of Modernism. LeWitt’s wall installations during the 1970s consisted of the artist drawing directly onto the surface of the gallery, exploring the relationship between art and space to create systematized patterns and lines. Born Solomon LeWitt on September 9, 1928 in Hartford, CT, he met Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, and Robert Mangold while working as a bookseller at The Museum of Modern Art’s gift shop in New York. Another one of his close colleagues was the celebrated arts writer Lucy Lippard, with whom he would go on to co-found the artist book nonprofit Printed Matter, Inc. in 1976. LeWitt died on April 8, 2007 in New York, NY at the age of 78.