Sol Lewitt

SOL LEWITT (Connecticut, 1928 - New York, 2007).
"Tangeld bands", 2002.
Gouache on paper.
Presents information label of the Juana de Aizpuru Gallery.
Framed with museum glass.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 75 x 57 cm; 98 x 81 cm (frame).
During the later artistic period other forms began to feature more prominently in LeWitt's drawings and murals, which also began to incorporate elements of Optical, or Op, Art. The designs of his wall drawings became freer and more playful as LeWitt experimented with curved lines and stains, as in the Squiggly Brushstrokes and Wavy Lines series. The line and its fluidity became one of the recurring resources in the artist's late artistic experimentation. This work is a clear reflection of this statement, an image where the color also has a great protagonism since it abandons the vibrant shades, lowering the intensity of the red that seems to merge with the black color of the black lines. This symbiosis between the main element of the composition and the background is recurrent in LeWitt's work, although in this case it acquires a tactile quality.
An artist linked to several movements, including conceptual and minimal art, Sol LeWitt expressed himself mainly through painting, drawing, photography and structures. Born into a Jewish family of Russian immigrants, after receiving a BFA from Syracuse University in 1949 he began a series of trips through Europe, where he was influenced by the great masters of painting. Settling in New York in the fifties, he focused his interest in graphic design, working for Seventeen Magazine. During the following decade the artist worked at the MoMA in New York, another experience that would mark the development of his work. During these years, LeWitt became one of the main representatives of conceptual art, which emphasizes that the idea, and not its physical form, is fundamental. He was one of the pioneers of this movement, as well as one of its most prominent theoreticians, and his work has also been related to minimalism. From 1965 LeWitt will be the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. His works include two- and three-dimensional works, from wall paintings (more than 1,200) to photographs, drawings and sculptures of all kinds, including towers, pyramids, geometric forms and progressions. Sol LeWitt frequently used open, modular structures based on the cube, a key form in the development of his language. In 1978, the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated his first retrospective exhibition to him. LeWitt is currently represented in that museum, as well as in the Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, the Kunstmuseum in Basel, the Palazzo Forti in Verona, the SMAK in Ghent, the Tate Gallery in London, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the National Gallery in Washington, the Metropolitan in New York and the National Gallery of Australia, among many others.