Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective

One of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, Sol LeWitt spent decades creating artworks that explore the potential of ideas for the making of visual forms. LeWitt transformed these ideas into objects of exquisite beauty and elegance, deliberately introducing elements of chance, intuition, or irrationality into the systems that governed the creation of his works. His delicate balancing act between thought and form, between order and disorder, between authorship and anonymity, has exerted an enormous influence on artists of subsequent generations. This book, the first retrospective of LeWitt’s work in more than twenty years, fosters a deeper understanding of the artist’s career and its significance to American art and thought.

Including essays by distinguished curators and art historians, this volume charts the evolution of LeWitt’s art from his groundbreaking work in Conceptualism during the early 1960s through his turn toward a more lyrical and sensual form of abstraction around 1980. With more than 450 images, the book provides a stunning visual survey of LeWitt’s oeuvre from 1960 to 1999, including sumptuous wall drawings, three-dimensional structures, works on paper, and photographs.