Sol LeWitt

Wall drawings, cubes

Sol LeWitt is seen as a founder of both conceptual art and minimal art. He believed that art does not necessarily have to be performed by the artist himself or at all, the idea was art in itself.

LeWitt made more than 1200 wall drawings . He wrote precise instructions for this with which others can carry them out. The wall drawings are made for this exhibition by students of the Utrecht School of the Arts. The wall drawings exist only temporarily, after the exhibition they are painted over. For his three-dimensional work he chose the cube as the basic form. He called his sculptures structures . They consist of white cubes in different compositions.

About Sol LeWitt (1928-2007)

Sol LeWitt was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. He led a secular life but identified with his Jewish heritage. His wife Carol describes LeWitt as "a very professed non-believer." In the 1980s he became a member of a Jewish community, for which he eventually designed and built a synagogue. His Jewish identity is also reflected in a number of relatively unknown projects, which are highlighted in the exhibition.

The Netherlands

Dutch museums, galleries, collectors and artists played an important role in Sol LeWitt's career from the start. His first retrospective in Europe was organized in 1970 by the Haags Gemeente Museum. In that period he worked together with the famous Amsterdam gallery Art & Project. Many of LeWitt's friends are well-known names from the Dutch art scene in the 1970s, such as conceptual artist Jan Dibbets, curator Enno Develing and designer Martin Visser.