DRAWING DIALOGUES | THE DRAWING CENTER
SELECTIONS FROM THE SOL LEWITT COLLECTION
APRIL 15 - JUNE 12, 2016
35 Wooster Street
“A view into what LeWitt collected and was looking at while developing and making his own work. Includes examples of conceptualist and minimalist drawings alongside works less obviously connected to these realms. Throwback to a more intimate time of influence.”
The Drawing Center presents Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection, an exhibition featuring over one hundred works by more than sixty artists from the renowned artist’s extraordinary collection. It is the first large-scale exhibition of the collection to be held in New York in over thirty years. The Drawing Center show concentrates 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 presents 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 features select works by LeWitt himself—including a wall drawing—that resonate with the other objects on view. Presenting work in drawing, sculpture, photography, print, and installation, Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection re-examines minimal and conceptual art and the parameters of the drawn medium through the organizing lens of one of its greatest practitioners.
Alighiero Boetti, Per Sol, Carol, Sofia, Eva LeWitt, Oggi il nono giorno nono mese dell'anno mille novecento ottantotto (For Sol, Carol, Sofia, Eva LeWitt, Today the ninth day of the ninth month of the year nineteen hundred and eighty-eight), 1988. Embroidery on fabric, 57 x 55 inches. LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT. © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome.
Franz West. Untitled, 1988. Mixed Media, 24 x 43 inches, LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT. Courtesy of the Legal Successor of the Artist.
Pat Steir. Drawing Lesson Part 2, color, 1978. Portfolio of five color sugar lift and spit bite. Aquatints with Aquatint and drypoint, sheet: 15 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches each; image: 11 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches each. LeWitt Collection, Chester, CT. Photograph by RJ Phil. Courtesy of Crown Point Press and Cheim & Read, New York.
Sol LeWitt’s status as one of the paramount 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 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; but the collection also reaches backwards and forwards from that time to embrace art from other periods and cultures. The LeWitt Collection is a remarkable example of an artist’s extraordinary curiosity and generosity, perhaps the truest portrait of a man who was notoriously private but who dedicated himself to his artistic interests and relationships. It is also a portrait of artistic developments in the 1960s and 1970s, when European and American minimal and conceptual art came into their own. Indeed, the collection can be viewed as a lived archive of the world in which LeWitt moved and worked, even as it examines the possibilities for conceptual art across media, disciplines, and time periods.
Curated by Claire Gilman, Senior Curator of The Drawing Center, and Béatrice Gross, Guest Curator and LeWitt scholar.
Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection will include works by William Anastasi, Carl Andre, Stephen Antonakos, Richard Artschwager, Alice Aycock, Jo Baer, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Gene Beery, Franco Bemporad, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, John Cage, Enrico Castellani, Lucinda Childs, Chuck Close, Hanne Darboven, Honoré Daumier, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Sam Durant, Jackie Ferrara, Dan Flavin, Charles Gaines, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, Dan Graham, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Eva Hesse, Channa Horwitz, Shirazeh Houshiary, Clarence John Laughlin, Ray Johnson, Donald Judd, Alex Katz, On Kawara, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Jannis Kounellis, Jacques Lacombe, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Jane Logemann, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Alvin Lucier, Robert Mangold, Mario Merz, Kazuko Miyamoto, Ree Morton, Eadweard Muybridge, Maurizio Nannucci, Giulio Paolini, Henry Pearson, Adrian Piper, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Steve Reich, Dorothea Rockburne, Fred Sandback, Jan Schoonhoven, Robert Smithson, Pat Steir, Allyson Strafella, Old Tutuma Tjapangati, David Tremlett, Yoshiiku Utagawa, Georges Vantongerloo, Bernar Venet, Ruth Vollmer, Hannah Weiner, Lawrence Weiner, and Franz West.
Drawing Dialogues: Selections from the Sol LeWitt Collection is made possible by the support of Marian Goodman Gallery. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund, Wynn and Sally Kramarsky, the Kraus Family Foundation, Mickey Cartin, Christie's, Carol Saper, the Evelyn Toll Family Foundation, Kathleen Irvin Loughlin, Steve Henry and Philip Shneidman, William and Donna Acquavella, Paula Cooper Gallery, Gabriella de Ferrari, Tony and Gail Ganz, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron, Leon B. and Cynthia H. Polsky, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Richard Roth, Michael and Nancy Rosen Blackwood, and Pat Steir.
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