Sol LeWitt ~ One of the Most Influential Artists of Our Time

Written by Janice Shouse Tuesday, 23 November 2010 19:54

MIAMI, FL - Miamians have the unique opportunity to experience a uniquely personal view of the abstract art of Sol LeWitt as Miami Art Museum presents LeWitt x 2, from February 23-June 3, 2007.  As an originator of “conceptual art,” LeWitt has consistently pushed the limits of art history and contemporary trends, making him one of the most influential artists of the mid-Twentieth Century.

LeWitt x 2 is a two-part exhibition: Sol LeWitt: Structure and Line, which provides a retrospective of the artists’ own work, and Selections from The LeWitt Collection, an insiders’ look at the contemporary art collection that he has created with his wife, Carol Androccio.  Taken together, these two presentations offer an intimate look at the aesthetic of one of America’s most distinguished artists.

Sol LeWitt: Structure and Line includes 45 works on paper and sculptures by the artist dating from the 1960s to the present.

This section of the exhibition includes drawings, featuring the premiere showing of LeWitt’s recent Scribble drawings; structures (a term the artist prefers for his three-dimensional works), including examples of his “open cube” series which developed over several decades; and gouache paintings from 1986 to 2005.  It also will include a wall drawing commissioned by MAM for this exhibition.

LeWitt’s monumental wall drawings—produced for public and private spaces since the 1960s—may be the works for which he is best known.  When MoMA presented a retrospective of LeWitt’s art in 1978, Curator of Drawing Bernice Rose noted that LeWitt’s wall drawings were “as important for drawing as Pollock's use of the drip technique had been for painting in the 1950s."  Executed by assistants, sometimes with local help, these works have evolved over the years to include bright geometric and curvilinear paintings.

Selections from The LeWitt Collection, the second exhibition component, features approximately 100 works that the LeWitts have collected from friends and fellow artists since the 1960s.

Many of the works in the LeWitt collection were gifts or trades from artist friends, including a number of key works from the early years of the conceptual art movement, as well as works by artists associated with the Arte Povera movement.  Included in Selections from the LeWitt Collection are works by Carl Andre, Alice Aycock, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jan Dibbets, Jackie Ferrara, Gilbert and George, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Alex Katz, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Mario Merz, Robert Ryman and Pat Steir.  LeWitt x 2 has been organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary.

Art Sol LeWitt was born in Connecticut in 1928.  He received a BFA from Syracuse University in 1949. Later, LeWitt moved to New York City where he studied at the School of Visual Arts.  He worked as a graphic designer at Seventeen Magazine and in the offices of architect I.M. Pei, before beginning work in the bookshop of the Museum of Modern Art in 1960.  At MoMA, his co-workers included artists such as Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin and Robert Mangold. LeWitt began exhibiting in New York in the early 1960s and since then has had many exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, Holland; the Kunsthalle, Berne, Switzerland; the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, the Netherlands; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Dean Swanson, curator for LeWitt x 2 and author of two essays in the exhibition catalogue, is an independent curator and art consultant who lives in Minneapolis.  He has organized numerous exhibitions, many for the Walker Art Center, where he was chief curator from 1968 to 1978, and at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, where he served as director for three years.  He has worked with artists including Joan Miró, Jean Dubuffet, Robert Motherwell, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Tour Schedule:
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (November 5, 2006, to January 14, 2007)
Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL (February 23–June 3, 2007)
Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (September 9–November 18, 2007) Austin Museum of Art in Austin, TX (May 24–August 17, 2008)

Publication:
A full-color catalogue for LeWitt x 2, published by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, includes essays by Dean Swanson, guest curator for the exhibition, and by Martin Friedman, director emeritus of the Walker Art Center.  Friedman retired as Director Emeritus of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1990. During his more than thirty-five years at the Walker, it became known as one of America’s premier museums for collecting, exhibiting, and publishing contemporary visual art.  An active author and curator, he recently published Close Reading: Chuck Close and the Art of the Self-Portrait.

Accredited by the American Association of Art Museums, Miami Art Museum is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts; with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Mayor and the Board of County Commissioners.

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