![]() Several of LeWitt's cube structures stood at approximate eye level. From 1969, he would conceive many of his modular structures on a large scale, to be constructed in aluminum or steel by industrial fabricators. In the mid-1960s, LeWitt began to work with the open cube: twelve identical linear elements connected at eight corners to form a skeletal structure. After creating an early body of work made up of closed-form wooden objects, heavily lacquered by hand, in the mid-1960s he "decided to remove the skin altogether and reveal the structure." This skeletal form, the radically simplified open cube, became a basic building block of the artist's three-dimensional work. His frequent use of open, modular structures originates from the cube, a form that influenced the artist's thinking from the time that he first became an artist. In the early 1960s, LeWitt first began to create his "structures," a term he used to describe his three-dimensional work. The large voids between the beams are in an 8.5:1 ratio with the width of the material. Sculpture Ī representative example of LeWitt's "Modular Cube" structures. In 1979, LeWitt participated in the design for the Lucinda Childs Dance Company's piece Dance. LeWitt's first serial sculptures were created in the 1960s using the modular form of the square in arrangements of varying visual complexity. These works range in size from books and gallery-sized installations to monumental outdoor pieces. His prolific two and three-dimensional work ranges from wall drawings (over 1200 of which have been executed) to hundreds of works on paper extending to structures in the form of towers, pyramids, geometric forms, and progressions. LeWitt is regarded as a founder of both Minimal and Conceptual art. ![]() He died at age 78 in New York from cancer complications. After returning to the United States in the late 1980s, LeWitt made Chester, Connecticut, his primary residence. In 1980, LeWitt left New York for Spoleto, Italy. LeWitt taught at several New York schools, including New York University and the School of Visual Arts, during the late 1960s. LeWitt also became friends with Hanne Darboven, Eva Hesse, and Robert Smithson. Curator Dorothy Canning Miller's now famous 1960 "Sixteen Americans" exhibition with work by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella created a swell of excitement and discussion among the community of artists with whom LeWitt associated. These experiences, combined with an entry-level job as a night receptionist and clerk he took in 1960 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, would influence LeWitt's later work.Īt MoMA, LeWitt's co-workers included fellow artists Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin, Gene Beery, and Robert Mangold, and the future art critic and writer, Lucy Lippard who worked as a page in the library. Around that time, LeWitt also discovered the work of the late 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, whose studies in sequence and locomotion were an early influence for him. In 1955, he was a graphic designer in the office of architect I.M. During this time he studied at the School of Visual Arts while also pursuing his interest in design at Seventeen magazine, where he did paste-ups, mechanicals, and photostats. LeWitt moved to New York City in 1953 and set up a studio on the Lower East Side, in the old Ashkenazi Jewish settlement on Hester Street. Shortly thereafter, he served in the Korean War, first in California, then Japan, and finally Korea. After receiving a BFA from Syracuse University in 1949, LeWitt traveled to Europe where he was exposed to Old Master paintings. ![]() His mother took him to art classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to a family of Jewish immigrants from Russia.
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