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Sol LeWitt More Art

American, 1928-2007

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.

Find a collection of original Sol LeWitt art on 1stDibs.

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Artist: Sol LeWitt
Unique drawing Geometric Abstraction on postcard conceptual art (hand signed)
By Sol LeWitt
Located in New York, NY
Sol LeWitt Unique Geometric Abstraction on Postcard, 1982 Original drawing done on postcard from the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam), mailed, stamped and postmarked (franked) from Spolet...
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1980s Abstract Geometric Sol LeWitt More Art

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He was one of the few “total artists” of the twentieth century, producing works that “expressed the needs of an industrial age as well as mirroring the advanced tendencies of the avant-garde.” One of four children of a tax revenue officer growing up in a village in the Austrian Salzkammergut Lake region, Bayer developed a love of nature and a life-long attachment to the mountains. A devotee of the Vienna Secession and the Vienna Workshops (Wiener Werkstätte) whose style influenced Bauhaus craftsmen in the 1920s, his dream of studying at the Academy of Art in Vienna was dashed at age seventeen by his father’s premature death. In 1919 Bayer began an apprenticeship with architect and designer, Georg Schmidthamer, where he produced his first typographic works. Later that same year he moved to Darmstadt, Germany, to work at the Mathildenhöhe Artists’ Colony with architect Emanuel Josef Margold of the Viennese School. As his working apprentice, Bayer first learned about the design of packages – something entirely new at the time – as well as the design of interiors and graphics of a decorative expressionist style, all of which later figured in his professional career. While at Darmstadt, he came across Wassily Kandinsky’s book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and learned of the new art school, the Weimar Bauhaus, in which he enrolled in 1921. He initially attended Johannes Itten’s preliminary course, followed by Wassily Kandinsky’s workshop on mural painting. Bayer later recalled, “The early years at the Bauhaus in Weimar became the formative experience of my subsequent work.” Following graduation in 1925, he was appointed head of the newly-created workshop for print and advertising at the Dessau Bauhaus that also produced the school’s own print works. During this time he designed the “Universal” typeface emphasizing legibility by removing the ornaments from letterforms (serifs). Three years later he left the Bauhaus to focus more on his own artwork, moving to Berlin where he worked as a graphic designer in advertising and as an artistic director of the Dorland Studio advertising agency. (Forty years later he designed a vast traveling exhibition, catalog and poster -- 50 Jahre Bauhaus -- shown in Germany, South America, Japan, Canada and the United States.) In pre-World War II Berlin he also pursued the design of exhibitions, painting, photography and photomontage, and was art director of Vogue magazine in Paris. On account of his previous association with the Bauhaus, the German Nazis removed his paintings from German museums and included him among the artists in a large exhibition entitled Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) that toured German and Austrian museums in 1937. His inclusion in that exhibition and the worsening political conditions in Nazi Germany prompted him to travel to New York that year with Marcel Breuer, meeting with former Bauhaus colleagues, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy to explore the possibilities of employment after immigration to the United States. In 1938 Bayer permanently relocated to the United States, settling in New York where he had a long and distinguished career in practically every aspect of the graphic arts, working for drug companies, magazines, department stores, and industrial corporations. In 1938 he arranged the exhibition, “Bauhaus 1919-1928” at the Museum of Modern Art, followed later by “Road to Victory” (1942, directed by Edward Steichen), “Airways to Peace” (1943) and “Art in Progress” (1944). Bayer’s designs for “Modern Art in Advertising” (1945), an exhibition of the Container Corporation of America (CAA) at the Art Institute of Chicago, earned him the support and friendship of Walter Paepcke, the corporation’s president and chairman of the board. Paepcke, whose embrace of modern currents and design changed the look of American advertising and industry, hired him to move to Aspen, Colorado, in 1946 as a design consultant transforming the moribund mountain town into a ski resort and a cultural center. Over the next twenty-eight years he became an influential catalyst in the community as a painter, graphic designer, architect and landscape designer, also serving as a design consultant for the Aspen Cultural Center. In the summer of 1949 Bayer promoted through poster design and other design work Paepcke’s Goethe Bicentennial Convocation attended by 2,000 visitors to Aspen and highlighted by the participation of Albert Schweitzer, Arthur Rubenstein, Jose Ortega y Gasset and Thornton Wilder. The celebration, held in a tent designed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, led to the establishment that same year of the world-famous Aspen Music Festival and School regarded as one of the top classical music venues in the United States, and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in (now the Aspen Institute), promoting in Paepcke’s words “the cross fertilization of men’s minds.” In 1946 Bayer completed his first architecture design project in Aspen, the Sundeck Ski Restaurant, at an elevation of 11,300 feet on Ajax Mountain. Three years later he built his first studio on Red Mountain, followed by a home which he sold in 1953 to Robert O. 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Crystal Tumblers
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Designed by Sol LeWitt and produced by ARTĚL in 2003, this exquisite set of four hand-engraved, mouth blown crystal tumblers is hand-signed and numbered from a limited edition of jus...
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Emblemata - Gouache by Sol Lewitt - 1999
By Sol LeWitt
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Emblemata is an original contemporary artwork realized by Sol Lewitt in 1999. Mixed colored gouache on paper. Signed and dated on the lower right. Studio Dabbeni Archive n. 2537. A...
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Six Geometric Figures - 1980s - Sol LeWitt - Catalogue - Contemporary
By Sol LeWitt
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Rare catalog, including six reproductions of Sol Lewitt’s works, printed in Italy in 1980. Original Title: “Six geometric figures and all their double combinations”. This is a rare...
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Untitled, Sol LeWitt
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A limited edition porcelain plate Sol LeWitt created for exclusively the Bonnefanten Museum in 2006 measuring 11 3/4 in. (30cm), diameter, the artwork is signed by the artist within ...
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Untitled, Sol LeWitt
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Located in New York, NY
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Untitled, Sol LeWitt
By Sol LeWitt
Located in New York, NY
A limited edition porcelain plate Sol LeWitt created for exclusively the Bonnefanten Museum in 2006 measuring 11 3/4 in. (30cm), diameter, the artwork is signed by the artist within ...
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Study for Irregular Cubes - Original Stencil by Sol Lewitt - 1983
By Sol LeWitt
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Study For Irregular Cubes is an original gouache on paper realized by Sol Lewitt in 1983. Hand-signed and dated on the lower right. This contemporary artwork consists in three sket...
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Untitled - Original Gouache by Sol Lewitt - 1997
By Sol LeWitt
Located in Roma, IT
Untitled is an original gouache on paper realized by the artist Sol Lewitt in 1997. Hand-signed on the lower right. This contemporary artwork represents an amazing abstract yellow ...
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Untitled Original Gouache by Sol Lewitt - 1997
By Sol LeWitt
Located in Roma, IT
Untitled is an original gouache on paper realized by the artist Sol Lewitt in 1997. Hand-signed on the lower right. This contemporary artwork represents an abstract red and pink co...
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1990s Contemporary Sol LeWitt More Art

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Six Geometric Figures - 1980s - Sol LeWitt - Catalogue - Contemporary
By Sol LeWitt
Located in Roma, IT
Precious catalog, including six reproductions of Sol Lewitt’s works, printed in Italy in 1980. Original Title: “Six geometric figures and all their double combinations”. This is a r...
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1980s Contemporary Sol LeWitt More Art

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Sol Lewitt more art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Sol LeWitt more art available for sale on 1stDibs.
Questions About Sol LeWitt More Art
  • 1stDibs ExpertApril 5, 2022
    Sol LeWitt was an American artist who experimented in different forms of art, including sculpture, painting and drawing. What he’s probably best known for is his conceptual art and his belief that the idea of art itself was art. He thought that the conception of the idea was the artists, but the production of the art could be done by anyone, or not done at all. On 1stDibs, find a variety of original artwork from top artists.
  • 1stDibs ExpertApril 5, 2022
    Sol LeWitt said that in conceptual art, the idea behind the art was at least as, if not more, important than what the finished work was. Some of the American artist's most famous works include Wall Drawing N.804, Brushstrokes and Lines in Four Directions. Find a collection of Sol LeWitt art on 1stDibs.

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