The Whitney Visual Explorer

Artist Biennial

Sol LeWitt

1928–2007

118 works in the collection 17 exhibitions at the Whitney

Biography

Over the course of five decades, Sol LeWitt explored a variety of mediums and scales while continually mining ideas he first developed in the early 1960s. Seeking to distinguish himself from the Abstract Expressionists, LeWitt determined that the initial concept, not the finished object, was the work of art. In a series of 1967 statements that outlined parameters for Conceptual art, the artist argued, “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”

In 1968 LeWitt sought to make a work that was “as two-dimensional as possible,” and he achieved this flatness literally by sketching directly onto a gallery wall. During the next forty years he conceived of more than 1,200 wall drawings. Accompanying instructions allow other artists and even amateurs to execute the works in different locations. LeWitt saw the wall drawings as the equivalent of musical scores that could be realized by any number of people in any location, and his instructions often allow for subtle interpretive differences. For Wall Drawing #289, the artist instructs drafters to draw lines in white crayon charted on a six-inch graphite grid that overlays one to four painted black walls.

LeWitt’s three-dimensional works, or “structures,” are based on the unit of an open rather than solid cube, peeling away what he perceived as the decorative skin on traditional sculpture. Though he created these structures in a range of scales, LeWitt maintained the ratio 1:8.5 for each unit (the empty space is 8.5 times the width of the wood or metal edge). Five Towers, a later, more complex structure, rises more than seven feet in height, culminating in four towers on each edge of its square form, with a fifth tower in the center.

Works in the collection

Showing the first 60 of 118 works. Browse all 118 →

Exhibitions at the Whitney