Sol LeWitt
Flat Top Pyramid With Colors Superimposed
1988

About the Item

TECHNICAL INFORMATION: Sol LeWitt Flat Top Pyramid With Colors Superimposed 1988 Silkscreen in Twenty Colors Superimposed 30 x 95 in. Edition of 30 Pencil signed and numbered Accompanied with COA by Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art Condition: This work is in excellent condition. ABOUT THIS WORK / ABOUT THE ARTIST: Sol LeWitt is one of the key artists of the 1960's. He is regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art. His work bridges Minimal and Conceptual art, movements that abandoned the emphasis on psychological content and gestural form typifying Abstract Expressionism in the 1950's. Born in 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut, LeWitt moved to New York in 1953, just as Abstract Expressionism was beginning to gain public recognition and was dominating contemporary art. For LeWitt and his colleagues, Abstract Expressionism had become, by the early 1960's, an entrenched style that offered few new creative possibilities for young artists. In contrast to the psychologically loaded brushwork of Abstraction Expressionism, LeWitt began to create works that utilized simple and impersonal forms, exploring repetition and variations of a basic form or line as a way to achieve works of a complex and satisfying nature. Perhaps most importantly, he evolved a working method for creating artworks based on simple directions, works that could be executed by others rather than the artist himself. LeWitt has never forsaken the fundamental approach that he developed in the 1960's, emphasizing ideas over psychological expression and letting other people bring these ideas into physical and visual form. Over the years, however, his work has grown more complex in its effect and more complicated in its execution. The work from the 1960's is the most austere and straightforward, while work from the 1970's inventively compounds the ideas and forms of the prior decade. The early 1980's saw a marked shift involving sensual color and surfaces, myriad geometric shapes and their permutations, and a more explicitly expressive overall character.

Creator:
Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007, American)
Creation Year:
1988
Dimensions:
Height: 30 in (76.2 cm)Width: 95 in (241.3 cm)
Medium:
Screen
Movement & Style:
Minimalist
Period:
1980-1989
Condition:
This work is in excellent condition.
Gallery Location:
Miami, FL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU53835088632
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Sol LeWitt

While New York City’s art scene in the 1950s and ’60s revolved around Abstract Expressionism, multidisciplinary artist Sol LeWitt paved an alternative path, creating a prolific output of work in the genres of minimalism and, later, Conceptual art.

While LeWitt is perhaps best known for his immense “wall drawings,” he created work in a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture. (However, in a characteristic rebuttal of canonical art history, he referred to these pieces as “structures.”) He also produced several texts, including the seminal Sentences on Conceptual Art (1969).

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1928, LeWitt received a BFA from Syracuse University before going to work as a graphic designer for the renowned architect I.M. Pei. He would later work at the book counter at the Museum of Modern Art, where his colleagues included fellow artists. LeWitt’s early exposure to architecture may well have had outsize influence on his subsequent career: He was known for the geometric nature of his work, specifically his fastidious, near-obsessive treatment of the cube, which he rendered repeatedly in various ways throughout his paintings, structures and wall drawings.

In the 1960s, LeWitt showed in several group exhibitions throughout New York and also began to experiment with three-dimensional structures, most modular riffs on the cube shape. His work was included in “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art,” curated by Mel Bochner, another leading exponent of Conceptualism.

Later, LeWitt debuted his now-iconic wall drawings, creating work directly on the walls of galleries and show spaces, beginning with pioneering gallerist Paula Cooper’s inaugural show in 1968. The wall drawings became a prime example of LeWitt’s philosophical approach to art, with their installation often carried out by museum staff or curators following precise instructions from the artist.

“The idea,” the artist once said, “becomes a machine that makes the art.” LeWitt continued to produce work until his death in 2007.

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