Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection

The artist collections always are objects of introspection and envy. The Drawing Center exhibited legendary artist Sol Lewitt’s personal collection and it met all expectations. Titled ‘Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection’, the exhibition featured over one hundred works by more than sixty artists from the renowned artist’s extraordinary collection. The Drawing Center show concentrated on minimal and conceptual drawing, which forms the core of the collection, with classic examples from key figures like Mel Bochner, Hanne Darboven, Eva Hesse, and Lawrence Weiner. It also includes works by artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Jan Dibbets, Kazuko Miyamoto, and Fred Sandback that investigate mark-making in unexpected materials and formats.

In addition to exploring cross-connections among LeWitt’s peers, the exhibition presented contributions by older artists whose methods inspired LeWitt, as well as younger artists whose approaches are in dialogue with earlier generations’, while extending the medium in new directions. Finally, the exhibition featured select works by LeWitt himself—including a wall drawing—that resonate with the other objects on view.

Sol LeWitt’s status as the iconic American artists of the past half-century is well established. What is less known is that LeWitt was also an avid collector who, during his lifetime, had amassed an extraordinary ensemble of over 4,000 pieces by approximately 750 artists through purchase, exchange, and gifts. The majority are works from the 1960s and 1970s by LeWitt’s friends and peers whom he admired and encouraged. The collection also embraces art from other periods and cultures.

About Sol LeWitt

Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) was an American artist and a pioneering figure within the minimal and conceptual art space. His instruction-based wall drawings and modular structures emphasize the importance of idea over the finished result and distils form to its primary elements: line, colour, and shape. Though LeWitt worked in drawing, photography, printmaking, and sculpture over the course of his career, he is perhaps best remembered for his wall drawings whose linear instructions can be carried out by others thereby underscoring his lifelong commitment to collaborative artistic production. Both as a young artist living in New York and throughout his career, LeWitt acquired work by practitioners he admired and who were often his friends. His curiosity and generosity were an inextricable part of his artistic legacy.

About The Drawing Center

The Drawing Center, a museum in Manhattan’s SoHo district, explores the medium of drawing as primary, dynamic, and relevant to contemporary culture, the future of art, and creative thought. Its activities, which are both multidisciplinary and broadly historical, include exhibitions; Open Sessions, a curated artist programme encouraging community and collaboration; the Drawing Papers publication series; and education and public programmes.