Sol Lewitt dealt with art as a teenager under expert guidance, he studied art from 1945, worked among artists from various specialist areas for several years, he began to teach art in his third decade of life and of course he always did active art throughout the time.
When he can be seen at his first solo exhibitions in the mid -1960s, an artist comes to the public, who actively and passively learned art and created art around three decades.
It is a well -developed work that can be seen in the following exhibitions, and the art lovers who look at this work quickly notice that, the success of Sol Lewitt's increases from now on.
Structures, soon with human proportions

by Laurenatclemson (CC by 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons
"structures" in the early 1960s , as he used to name his three-dimensional work.
He used the open modular structure of the cubes, a form that has fascinated his thinking since the time, to which he first felt like an artist. After a first series of work closed, shaped wooden objects that were painted thickly by hand, he decided in the mid-1960s to "completely remove the skin and reveal the structure."
This skeletal shape, radically simplified open cubes , became a basic building block of his three -dimensional work. These open cubes always contained the same twelve linear elements that were connected to the skeletal structure at eight corners.
From 1969 he created many of his modular structures on a larger scale, they were produced in aluminum or steel by industrial processors. Each of its large open cubes was 63 inches, which corresponds to the equivalent. At this stage, Lewitt began to generally transfer the proportions of the human body to its fundamental sculpture units.
From the mid -1980s, Lewitt then put together some of his sculptures from stacked concrete stones, as well as with the previous "structures", he created variations of a limitation that himself imposed.

Fotov by Acegas @ flickr.com, Artwork by Sol de Witt (flickr.com/photos/acevedo/23872048/) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Now Lewitt began working with concrete blocks. In 1985 the first "Cube" in a park in Basel (today in the Zellweger Park, Uster, Canton of Zurich), from 1990 Lewitt designed many variators of a tower that was to be built from concrete blocks.
Lewitt developed a growing interest in random shapes with curvy lines and in highly saturated colors in a turning point from his well-known geometric shape vocabulary.
This interest culminated until the time of his death in April 2007 in the design of a concrete sculpture with 9 towers, which consists of almost 4,000 white concrete blocks and has a total height of 5 meters. Sol Lewitt's “9 Towers” has been in the Kivik Art Center in Lilla Stenshuvud, Simrishamn, Sweden since 2014.
Wall Drawings - wall paintings
In 1968 Lewitt began to make murals simple diagrams drawn directly on the wall, first works in graphite, then colored pencils, colored pencils, ink, acrylic paint and other things were used.
Because Lewitt made one of these "Wall Drawings" in 1968 for the opening exhibition of the Paula Cooper Gallery, which the "Student Mobilization Committee to End The War in Vietnam" supported, this Wall Drawing appeared a little later a thousand times a few times on surfaces of walls.

Photo by Zareman [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
From 1969 to 1970 Lewitt created four "Drawings Series" , which show the basic elements of the first works in various combinations. In each series, he made another system to put together the twenty -four possible combinations of a square divided into four equal parts.
The "Drawings Series I" system called Lewitt "Rotation" , in "Drawings Series II he used the " Mirror " ," Drawings Series III "used " Cross & Reverse Mirror " and" Drawings Series IV "the " Cross Reverse " .
These systems and Lewitt continued to develop, from the bright "Wall Drawing #122" (1972) to the dark "Wall Drawing #792" (1995), from pencil and chalk to lively ink, whose commitment of Lewitt at his study of the frescoes Giotto, Masaccios and other formerly Florentine painters in his Italian period (late 1970s) attributed.
Towards the end of the 1990s/early 2000s, Lewitt had arrived at highly saturated colorful acrylic wall drawings , the shapes curved, playful and almost accidentally appeared, but which were created according to a demanding system. The ligaments that run the image, for example, had to have exactly the same width, no colored section was allowed to touch another section in the same color.
In 2005, Lewitt began with a series of 'Skribble' Wall Drawings , Torture Wall Painting, which was given this name because he only described outlines here that later had to be filled with graphite in painstaking little work by "scribbling".
In precisely prescribed density, six times graduated, which gives a unique impression of three -dimensionality. The six-week meditation course in the Tibetan monastery, with confidentiality, is an exciting event compared to a few weeks of “scribbling”.
On albrightknox.org you can watch people from the Sol Lewitt area "scribble" - in 2010, they are creating the work of art designed by Lewitt in 2006.
This largest dribbled mural, "Wall Drawing #1268" still hangs in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in New York, the absolutely stunning effect can be guessed when looking at the small illustration.
The completion of the work of art by others is not a unegated to the artist, but is one of the principles of Lewitt's work, which become Wall Drawings and should normally be carried out by other people and not artists themselves.
Sol Lewitt writes the control unit of concept art
The above has already been indicated that the initially classified artist Sol Lewitt as a minimalist is called the "father of concept art" because he invented this term.
It can be stated a little more precisely that Sol Lewitt moved in the middle of the many artists who invented concept art together-a new style in art lies in the air as long as a new behavior trend in a society in a society (e.g. the trend to be observed from the uncritical "I-Bin-Doch-Nnicht-Blöd" consumption to the stupid consumption of consumption).
Sol Lewitt personally shaped the term "conceptual art" and thus immediately presented the theoretical conductor of the new art direction : The "paragraphs on conceptual art" described the concept art fully, as art in which the idea of the work of art is in the foreground, the concept defines art.
And this idea also includes that a work of art is completed by other people and not artists themselves, one of the most important principles in its "paragraphs on conceptual art" .
Colored logic: Sol Lewitt's Gouaches
In the 1980s, after his time in Italy, Sol Lewitt began to paint with gouache, using the semi -transparent, water -based color, freely flowing abstract works were created in contrast colors.
Atypical for the idea of concept art, he painted these works of art with his own hands, often in series that circled around a certain motif.
No motif in the figurative sense, the series deals with "irregular forms" (irregular forms), "parallel curves" (paralelle curves), "squiggly brushstrokes" (ornate brush strokes) and "web-like grids" (mains-like grid).
At first glance, these gouaches, who appear in their loosely thrown compositions like a tremendous break with Lewitt previous work, are at second glance the exact logical continuation of his work.
Its "irregular forms” are in their irregularity of an almost constricting regularity (see artnet.de ). His "parallel curves" give the human brain the logic of an organically grown structure.
The "squiggly Brushstrokes" subconsciously commemorate the slightly crumpled fur of the animal adapted to a special environment, which is known to be developed in the course of a long evolution even after a very sensible order.
In his “web-like grids” you could see the ingenious foresight of an organic development of this website that did not yet exist at the time of the creation of the works of art: from the blurred, self-organizing surface to absolute compression, the information in the black space.
So again art with a logical structure, it would be interesting to find out whether Sol Lewitt is worshiped by artistically interested mathematicians to a similar degree as Johann Sebastian Bach by musically interesting mathematicians.
Since Sol Lewitt began with his art, various sciences have discovered genius principles behind organic structures - exactly behind such organic structures that material -loving people think of when looking at Sol Lewitt's work. Sol Lewitt has researched the simple and ingenious logic of such structures less strictly scientifically than was intuitive in his art ...
Artist books
Sol Lewitt's interest in the seriality of art has brought about 50 artist books since 1966, the last in 2002.
In 1976 he founded Lucy Lippard and other "Printed Matter" , an organization that is still existing today, supported and distributed by "Artist's Books" , Printedmatter.org .
Architecture and landscape architecture
Sol Lewitt worked with the architect Stephen Lloyd to design a synagogue for the "Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek" community in Chester, Connecticut, which he belonged to.
An "airy" (airy) synagogue construction was created, with a flat dome, which is worn by a lush wooden roof chair, a homage of Lewitts to the wooden synagogue buildings usual in Eastern Europe and extraordinarily beautiful, pictures on www.cbsrz.org .
In 1981, Lewitt was invited by the Fair Lount Park Art Association (today Association for Public Art ) to design a public work of art for FAIrTOUNT PARK. He designed the "Lines in Four Directions in Flowers" with over 7,000 plants that should be planted in a precisely specified ornamental structure. The artwork was planted in 2011, here it can be viewed in a small slideshow: www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/770.html .
Exhibition history - Sol Lewitt as a world artist
A summary of the life and work of an exceptional artist is of course a look at the exhibition history.
In 2015, the exceptional artist Sol Lewitt or his work had completed half a century of exhibition history 300 solo exhibitions and well over 500 group exhibitions .
That is why it is about the world with Sol Lewitt, across the world and through more randomly selected exhibition locations. This cross -section with one or two outstanding exhibitions per year in various centers in contemporary art illustrates much more impressive than any longer list that Sol Lewitt was and is at home in the centers of modern art, all over the world:
Solo exhibitions
- 1965 John Daniels Gallery, New York, USA
- 1969 Sol Lewitt: Sculptures and Wall Drawings, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, Germany
- 1970 Gemeentemuseum, the Hague, the Netherlands, first retrospective
- 1972 Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland
- 1973 Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England
- 1974 Inclete Open Cubes and Wall Drawings, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburg, Scotland; With a subsequent tour of further locations 1974-1977
- 1975 Wall Drawings, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
- 1976 Graphic: 1970 - 1975, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland
- 1977 The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
- 1978 Sol Lewitt (retrospective) The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; With a subsequent tour of further locations 1978-1979
- 1980 Sol Lewitt, Young Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, USA
- 1981 Sol Lewitt Wall Drawings & Drawings, New York, USA
- 1984 Wall Drawings and Works on Paper, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 1986 Sol Lewitt: Print 1970 - 1986, The Tate Gallery, London, England
- 1988 Sol Lewitt Prints, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA
- 1989 Sol Lewitt Wall Drawings 1984 - 1989, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland
- 1992 Sol Lewitt Drawing 1958 - 1992, Haags Gemeentemuseum, the Hague, Netherlands, followed by tour
- 1993 Sol Lewitt Structures 1962 - 1993, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England, followed by a tour
- 1994 Sol Lewitt Wall Drawings, 25 Years of Wall Drawings - 1969 - 1994, Renn Espace d'Art Contemporain, Paris, France
- 1995 Sol Lewitt: Styrofoam Wall Pieces, Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, Villa Franck, Ludwigsburg, Germany
- 1996 United States Representative, 23 International Bienal of Sao Paolo, Brazil
- 1997 Sol Lewitt: New Works, Gallery Next St. Stephan, Vienna, Austria
- 1998 Sol Lewitt, Liliana Tovar, Stockholm, Sweden
- 1999 Sol Lewitt: Irregular Forms, Galerie Franck + Schulte, Berlin, Germany
- 2000 Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Then in Chicago + New York, USA
- 2001 Sol Lewitt, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 2002 Sol Lewitt, Juliana Gallery, Seoul, Korea
- 2002 Sol Lewitt: Drawings, Prints and Books 1968 - 1988, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
- 2003 Sol Lewitt: Fotografia, Museo Fundación Ico, Madrid, Spain; Then in Barcelona, Spain; Graz, Austria; Avignon, France
- 2004 Sol Lewitt: New Work, Lisson Gallery, London, England
- 2005 Disegni a Matita Sul Muro: Sol Lewitt, Al Portico d'Ottavia, Valentina Bonomo Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy
- 2005 Sol Lewitt: Lost Voices, Synagogue Stommeln, Pulheim, Germany
- 2006 Sol Lewitt, Al Galeria, Budapest, Hungary
- 2007 Sol Lewitt: Gouaches, Muiler Muiler Gallery, Knokke-Heist, Belgium
- 2008 Focus: Sol Lewitt, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- 2009 Artist's Books by Sol Lewitt, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Spoleto, Italy; Afterwards in Bologna, Italy; Istanbul, Türkiye; Paris, France; Sheffield, UK; Ljubljana, Slovenia
- 2010 Sol Lewitt: A Mercer Union Legacy Project, Mercer Union, Toronto, Canada
- 2011 Sol Lewitt: Four Towers Structure, Galerie Annemarie Verna, Zurich, Switzerland
- 2012 Sol Lewitt: Pyramids, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, France
- 2013 Sol Lewitt, Wall Drawings #343a - #343b - #343c - #343g and Works on Paper, Blondeau & Cie, Rue de la Muse, Geneva, Switzerland
- 2014 Sol Lewitt: Wall Drawing #370, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
- 2015 Sol Lewitt: 17 Wall Drawings 1969-1998, Fundacion Botin, Cantabria, Spain
Group exhibitions
- 1964 Group Show Curated by Dan Flavin at the Kaymar Gallery, New York, USA
- 1967 Serial Art, Finch College Museum, New York, USA
- 1968 Benefit for the Student Mobilization Committee to End The War in Vietnam, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, USA
- 1968 Documenta IV, Kassel, Germany (and Documenta V 1972, Documenta VI 1977, Documenta VII 1982)
- 1969 When Attitudes Become Form, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- 1976 Drawing Now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- 1981 Western Art, Cologne, Germany
- 1987 Skulpture Projects, Münster, Germany
- 1988 Zeitlos, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany
- 1994 Mapping, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- 1995 Carl Andre, Sol Lewitt, Alfonso Artiaco, Pozzuoli/Napoli, Italy
- 1995 Adding It Up: Print Acquisitions 1970 - 1995, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- 1996 Main Stations: Newman, Pollock , Beuys, Broodthaers, Klein, Warhol, Lewitt, Johns, Stella, Ryman, Kounellis, Nauman, Weiner, Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg
- 1996 Thinking Print: Books to Billboards 1980 - 1995, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- 1996 Sculpture Projects, Münster, Germany
- 1996 XLVII Esposizione Internazional d'Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Italy
- 1997 Sculpture Projects, Münster, Germany
- 1997 XLVII Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Italy
- 1998 SESC, New Delhi, India
- 1998 Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, Robert Mangold: Prints, Galerie Franck + Schulte, Berlin, Germany
- 1999 Galeria Ibeu, Copacabana, Brazil
- 2000 Artisti Collezionisti, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, Italy
- 2001 Art Works: The Marzona Collection Art Around 1968, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany
- 2002 Conceptual Art: 1965-1975 from Dutch and Belgian Collections, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
- 2003 The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960-1982, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA
- 2004 Traces: Body and Idea in Contemporary Art, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
- 2005 Collection Lambert En Avignon, Musée d'Art Contemporain, Avignon, France
- 2006 Ideal City - Invisible Cities, to Exhibition by European Art Projects, Zamosc, Poland and Potsdam, Germany
- 2007 Dump: Postmodern Sculpture in the Dissolved Field, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
- 2007 Words from the Collection of Societe Generale Paris, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania
- 2007 Guggenheim Collection: 1940s to Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
- 2008 Exact + Different: Art and Mathematics from Dürer to Sol Lewitt, Museum Modern Art Foundation Ludwig Vienna, Austria
- 2009 Don't Think. Feel! Gallery Yamaguchi, Kunst-Bau, Tokyo, Japan
- 2009 American Printmaking Since 1960, Art Gallery Dubrovnik, Croatia
- 2010 On-Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
- 2011 Conceptual Tendencies 1960S to Today, Daimler Art Collection, Potsdammer Platz Berlin, Germany
- 2012 en subjective historia 1966-2011, Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm, Sweden
- 2013 Conceptual Tendencies 1960S to Today II: Body/Space/Volume, Daimler Art Collection, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, Germany
- 2014 Melting Walls, Works from the Igal Ahouvi Art Collection, Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel
- 2015 America is hard to see, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
The above list of the exhibition venues Sol Lewitt's exhibition venues, despite or precisely because of the randomly made selection, forms an astonishingly precise look at the world centers of art and that art has something to do with democracy ...
Sol Lewitt's art can be visited in public space in many places in the world, in Germany and closeness z. B. the "Cube" (1984) in Zellweger Park in Uster near Zurich, the "Black Form-Dedicated to the Missing Jews" (1987) in Hamburg-Altona, the "Open Cubes" (1991) in the Gallus facility in Frankfurt am Main, the "Three Triangles" (1993/94) at the north end of the Teerhof Peninsula in Bremen, "without title" (2006/2007) in the Mercatorhalle in Duisburg, "Wall Drawing" in the United States message in Berlin.

Photo by Verograph (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons
You can find more Sol Lewitt in Europe in many public collections , including the most important museum collections of contemporary art :
- Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia;
- Center Georges Pompidou, Paris;
- Dia: Beacon, New York;
- EVN Collection, Maria Enzersdorf, Austria;
- Dia: Beacon, Guggenheim Museum, New York;
- Halls for New Art, Schaffhausen, Switzerland;
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC;
- Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich;
- Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples.
- Museum of Modern Art, New York;
- National Gallery of Art, Washington DC;
- National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade;
- Tate Modern, London;
- Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven;
In the United States there are some permanent “Wall Drawings” to find in/at the Axa Center, New York; Atlanta City Hall, Atlanta; Akron Art Museum, Akron; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Columbus Circle Subway Station, New York; Conrad Hotel, New York; Green Center for Physics at, Cambridge; Jewish Community Center, New York; The Jewish Museum of New York, New York; John Pearson's House, Oberlin, Ohio; United States Courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford.
With the world greats of art, the question always arises how they made the rise to this top position. Sol Lewitt is a pleasant example of how such a climb is possible, without dark powers of almost satanic talent, without the grubby forces of the promotion of unamifiarities through influential relatives/acquaintances, without the radiant energy of a special happiness and without the help of only chance; Simply with simple work .
From the beginning, Sol Lewitt worked on his art within a consistently pursued and sustainably carried out career strategy. Until his death in 1980, Lewitt implemented one creative idea after another.
In order to get a good impression of the diversity of his art, you only have to enter "Sol Lewitt" in a picture search engine or can browse a little directly on the following pin board:
Sol Lewitt is undisputed one of the most important artists of his time when they want to put it in money: in 2014 "Wavy Brushstroke" (1995, Gouache on cardboard) over Sotheby's, New York .
Sol Lewitt has left a lot with his art and the thought structure, which is behind his idea of concept art: he changed the relationship between the idea and the art product - and it is a change in the direction of more democracy if everyone can make art.
It says that the artist is not on a base of admiration, but that any art can and should think of all art - and should think of art - a way towards more creativity and more freedom of thoughts.
In the case of a mini-knew show by Sol Lewitt's works on one side picture search engine, a special consequence of the logic, which Lewitt has always included when creating his art: Sol Lewitt's works of art have all a high degree of aesthetics , nothing is wanted, provocative, eye disruptive, and many of his works of art are perceived as beautiful by many people.
In this sense, this applies: "It must always be concept art" perhaps for some work of art in Auguststrasse in Berlin, but in the eyes of most people never for the concept art of Sol Lewitt.