Sol LeWitt: Colour

About

Sol LeWitt: Colour will focus on late prints by the artist. It is the first solo exhibition of graphic works by Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007) to be shown in the UK since his death over ten years ago.

Printmaking became central to LeWitt’s practice in 1970. Over his lifetime he undertook 170 print projects, and was honoured with two print retrospectives, in 1974 at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and in 1986 at the Tate Gallery, London. The last solo presentation of LeWitt’s graphic works in London was in 2007. LeWitt believed in the primacy of the idea or concept in an artwork rather than its execution or outcome, turning works into a series of ideas that anyone could, in principle, carry out. The collaborative nature of printmaking was intrinsic to his working method. 

The exhibition will include several print series incorporating both organic forms and basic shapes and colours which the artist uses to form complex relationships and patterns. Woodcuts, etchings and screenprints explore variations of what LeWitt describes, in his titles, as ‘straight’ and ‘not straight’ lines and evenly delineated ‘arcs’. Amongst these will be Forms Derived from a Cube (Colors Superimposed), 1991 (pictured), a set of twelve screenprints, depicting twenty-four of the countless possible forms within the structure of a cube and using different colours to describe each plane.

This exhibition runs concurrently to Richard Serra: Black and White.Through LeWitt’s and Serra’s (b. 1938) ground-breaking and radical approaches, both artists went on to become prolific printmakers, using their chosen media to undermine our understanding of what constitutes an editioned work.