Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt born in Hartford (Connecticut, United States) in 1928 and died in New York in 2007.

Sol LeWitt is widely recognized as one of the father of Conceptual Art.

He overturned the definition and the conventional rules of the artistic praxis and its material production through the abolition of the notions of uniqueness, unrepeatability and individual skill in manual execution in favour of an absolute primacy of the Idea. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution becomes a perfunctory affair. Almost irrelevant, so much that it can be made by anyone as long as they accomplish the artist’s instructions.

To explain this with the artist’s word "idea become the tool that produces art". The artist defines sculptures, gouaches and wall-drawings as "structures". The visual vocabulary that he used could be multiplied and transformed infinitely. In his practise is clearly readable not only an architectural dimension but also a constant relation with the space within which the work is located.

"The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman." (SL, 1967)