Library Information and Colophon

Title	Grids, Using Straight, Not-Straight Lines & Broken Lines in All Their Possible Combinations View record in CONTENTdm
Publication	New York City: Parasol Press, 1973
Library Call #	N6537.L48 G75 1973 View Reed library catalog record
Description	28 leaves of plates: ill.; 28cm
Colophon/Notes	Illustrations: 28 black and white etchings. Each initialed in pencil on the reverse by the artist. Edition of 25 copies, with 10 artist’s proofs. Binding: Publisher’s white linen, by the Schuberth Bookbindery, San Francisco.

Biography

Sol LeWitt

(1928-2007)
American

Sol LeWitt worked as a conceptual and minimalist artist during the postwar era of 1960s and 1970s America. His books in Reed’s Special Collections work out visual permutations of a conceptual system, such as in the book Grids, Using Straight, Not-Straight Lines, and Broken Lines in All Their Possible Combinations whose title explicitly explains its content.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1928 Sol LeWitt attended Syracuse University where he studied art until 1949.1 In 1951 he was drafted for the Korean War in which he made posters for the Special Services. Upon his return, he moved to New York and studied illustration and cartooning. In 1960 LeWitt began working in the bookstore at the Museum of Modern Art where he met coworkers and young artists, Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, and Robert Mangold, and the writer Lucy Lippard.

LeWitt was highly influenced by Russian constructivist and suprematist art.2 “But unlike some strict Minimalists, Mr. LeWitt was not interested in industrial materials. He was focused on systems and concepts — volume, transparency, sequences, variations, stasis, irregularity and so on — which he expressed in words that might or might not be translated into actual sculptures or photographs or drawings.”3 For LeWitt working out a conceptual path to its end directed the aesthetic form rather than vise-versa.

Footnotes

Other Books in Special Collections by this Author

Title	Four Basic Kinds of Lines & Colour
Publication	London: Lisson Gallery; New York: P. David Press, 1969-1971
Library Call #	N6537.L67 1971 View Reed library catalog record
Description	36p.: chiefly ill. (some col.); 20cm
Title	Geometric Figures & Color
Publication	New York: H.N. Abrams, 1979
Library Call #	NK1535.L63 A4 1979 View Reed library catalog record
Description	48p.: chiefly col. Ill.; 22cm
Title	Lines to Specific Points View artist books webpage
Publication	New York City: Parasol Press, 1975
Library Call #	N6537.L48 L55 1975 View Reed library catalog record
Description	5 leaves of plates in portfolio: aoll ill.; 45 x 45 cm

References and Links

Kimmelman, Michael. “Sol LeWitt, Master of Conceptualism, Dies at 78.” The New York Times 9 April 2007. View website

LeWitt, Sol. LeWitt x 2: Sol LeWitt: Structure and Line: Selections from the LeWitt Collection. Org. Dean Swanson. Madison, WI: Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; New York: Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art, 2006. View Reed library catalog record

LeWitt, Sol. Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings, All Studio G7. Org. Marcella Manni and Giuseppe Villirillo. Bologna, Italy: Damiani, 2006. View Reed library catalog record

LeWitt, Sol. Sol LeWitt, Bands of Color: One-, Two-, Three-, and Four-Part Combinations of Vertical, Horizontal, and Diagonal Left and Right Bands of Color, 1993-34 [exhibition]. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1999. View Reed library catalog record

LeWitt, Sol. Sol LeWitt, Twenty-Five Years of Wall Drawings, 1968-1993. Andover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993. View Reed library catalog record

Baume, Nicholas, Ed. Sol LeWitt: Incomplete Open Cubes. Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. View Reed library catalog record

Garrels, Gary, Ed. Sol LeWitt. San Francisco, CA: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000. View Reed library catalog record