SOL LEWITT

SOL LEWITT

American sculptor, printmaker and draughtsman. He studied at Syracuse University, NY, from 1945 to 1949, and between 1951 and 1952 he served in the US Army in Japan and Korea, where he was able to visit oriental shrines, temples and gardens. In 1953 he moved to New York, where he attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School. From 1955 to 1956 he worked as a graphic designer for the architect I. M. Pei, and he began to make paintings while continuing to work as a graphic designer. He abandoned painting in 1962 and began to make abstract black-and-white reliefs, followed in 1963 by relief constructions with nested enclosures projecting into space, and box- and table-like constructions. He first made serial and modular works, for which he is best known, in 1965. Initially these were wall and floor structures, but in 1968 LeWitt made his first wall drawing in pencil on plaster, at the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (see 1978 exh. cat., p. 92). From that time he continued to make structures, wall drawings and drawings on paper as well as prints, which he first made in 1971.