FR EN
1 / 11
three different sizes of cubes on the tablea small wooden structure with a square inside of ita white box that is on top of a black tablea white cube with a black base sitting on a tablean image of a small white box on a black tablea white metal structure that is on a black tablea close up of a metal structure on a tablea white metal frame with a black topa close up of a white metal frame on a black floorthe corner of a white metal table with a black table topa white box with a black base on a table
Featured lot selected by the auctions House.
Premium CANNES ENCHERES

1290 - Sol LEWITT (1928–2007)
See original version (French)

Estimate €12,000 - €15,000
Sale commission
Description
Sol LEWITT (1928–2007) Open cube – 1984 Enamelled iron structure H: 24; W: 24; D: 24 cm (slight chipping and repainted) Artist’s certificate Provenance: - Jacqueline Decelle Collection - Acquired directly by the collector from the Massimo Minini Gallery, Brescia, at the Basel Art Fair in 1985 Exhibition: - “On loan from the Decelle Collection”, Musée de la Culture et de la Communication, Saint-Étienne, 7 June to 13 July 1986 (p. 10 of the catalogue) Note: Established as a true artistic tool, the cube would accompany Sol LeWitt throughout his career. Used by the artist as a unit, the square (hollowed out, structural), reduced to its essential form, unfolds into networks, invading both real and conceptual space, profoundly transforming the way we perceive sculptural art. After studying art in New York, LeWitt joined, at the age of twenty-seven, the practice of Ieoh Ming Pei, the future architect of the famous Louvre Pyramid. Employed as a graphic designer, he experimented there with the possibilities offered by geometry and seriality. The influence of architecture would leave a lasting mark on the young artist’s visual language and would even find its way into the terminology Lewitt favoured when referring to his works, preferring the term ‘structures’ to ‘sculptures’ “In conceptual art, the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work [...] the idea becomes a machine for making art”. (Lucy R. Lippard in Sol LeWitt, “Exhibition Catalogue: The Museum of Modern Art”, New York 1978, p. 25). The open cube has been one of LeWitt’s fundamental motifs since the mid-1960s. He gradually moved away from the solid mass of the traditional cube, retaining only its basic geometric structure: lines, angles and spatial relationships. The cube thus becomes a sort of basic ‘vocabulary’ enabling the construction of more complex structures. In the 1970s, this exploration led in particular to the famous Incomplete Open Cubes (1974). LeWitt systematically removed certain elements from the cube and identified 122 different configurations. Our sculptures date from 1984, a period when the artist returned to the cube as an autonomous elementary form. They can therefore be seen as an extremely condensed elementary form of this research: the cube stripped of all surface and reduced to its skeleton. Our three structures may be sold with the option to combine them.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
About the sale Contemporary Art
Auction location
Auction time 10/24/2026 at 10:00 AM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
You may also like