Connecticut HQ Art

Sol LeWitt was a seminal artist of the 20th century and was influential as a founder of both the minimalist and conceptual art movements in the late 1960s. He was pivotal in the creation of a radical new aesthetic that pushed geometric abstraction, based on a certain set of objective guidelines, to its logical extreme, using precise, hard-edged forms to create nonhierarchical compositions. LeWitt remains celebrated for his conceptual wall drawings as well as his many variations of open cube structures, complex forms, and works on paper.

In the 1990s, LeWitt began using gouache, an opaque water-based paint, to produce free-flowing abstract works in contrasting colors, including this piece, which is part of group of works he called Irregular Forms. These playful, dynamic pieces—perhaps referring to his earlier objective minimalism—continue his persistent use of red, yellow, and blue. By establishing his own visual logic from simple elements—primary colors and triangles, circles, and squares—LeWitt explores endless variations of color and form.

LeWitt has been the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world. A major retrospective of his work was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art in 2000 and then traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His works are found in many of the most important museum collections including Tate Collection, London, U.K.; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands; Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia; Guggenheim Museum, New York, N.Y.; MoMA, New York, N.Y.; Dia:Beacon, New York, USA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. He attended Syracuse University and served in the Korean War.