Sol LeWitt: 17 Wall Drawings, 1970-2015
Order at fmabotin [at] fundacionbotin.org
Fundación Botín announces the launch of an illustrated catalogue, published on the occasion of the exhibition Sol LeWitt: 17 Wall Drawings, 1970-2015, taking place in its exhibition space. The most comprehensive display of wall drawings held in Spain to date, the exhibition was co-curated by John Hogan and Benjamin Weil, and was organized in collaboration with the Yale University Art Gallery and The Estate of Sol LeWitt.
The bilingual catalogue (English and Spanish) brings together a selection of texts available in Spanish for the first time, which includes writings by the artist as well as by art historians, critics and artists: “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” which LeWitt wrote for the magazine Artforum in 1967, is regarded as a manifesto of Conceptual Art; it was later complimented with the no-less seminal “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” which the artist published in the magazine Art Language in 1969. The publication also includes “Wall Drawings and Doing Wall Drawings,” published by LeWitt in April 1970 in Arts Magazine.
Other texts include the historical correspondence between the artist and Andrea Miller-Keller—then curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut—first published in the catalogue of the Wall Drawing show that took place at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1984. Art historian and curator Lynne Cooke—Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC—discusses the interpretation of Sol LeWitt’s instructions. The catalogue also includes an essay by Béatrice Gross, first published in the catalogue of Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings from 1968 to 2007, the exhibition she curated at The Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2013.
In addition, the catalogue Sol LeWitt: 17 Wall Drawings, 1970-2015 analyzes the oeuvre and figure of Sol LeWitt through the contributions of three artists: Sun/Sol, a photograph by Louise Lawler, who has been documenting works of art in the contexts in which they are exhibited since the 1970s; a text by composer Steve Reich, a pioneer of new musical forms, in which he analyses the legacy of his colleague and friend; and a contribution by Lawrence Weiner, regarded along with LeWitt as one of the founders of Conceptual Art. This publication also includes a facsimile of one of LeWitt’s very first artist’s books, produced in December 1968 to accompany his exhibition at ACE Gallery in Los Angeles.
Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) is one of the key figures of contemporary art. His thoughts and work have been enormously influential and continue to inspire many younger artists and thinkers in the field. His writings of reference on Conceptual Art make him an important proponent of this new approach to artmaking.
His wall drawings were always intended to have a temporary presence in the space of exhibition: they are typically erased after the exhibition closes, and can perpetually be re-installed in other locations.
Orders for the 280-page catalogue can be placed via email at: fmabotin [at] fundacionbotin.org
