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12 - 12. SOL LEWITT (1928-2007) Untitled 1972 painted steel 92 x …
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Estimate €150,000 - €200,000
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Description
12. SOL LEWITT (1928-2007) Untitled 1972 painted steel 92 x 92 x 92 cm. 36 1/4 x 36 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. Produced in 1972, this work is unique. A certificate from the artist will be given to the buyer. Provenance Galerie Denise René, Paris / Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf Pierre Nahon Collection, Paris Ghislain Mollet-Viéville Collection, Paris Collection Monsieur & Madame Claude Cluzel, Europe (acquired from them in 1982) Then by descent to the current owner Exhibitions Dunkerque, Ghislain Mollet-Viéville - Agent d'art, Ecole des Beaux Arts Georges Pompidou, April - May 1986, p. 41, illustrated in black and white in situ; n.p., illustrated in black and white Tours, Centre de Création Contemporaine (CCC), hanging 3, minimal art, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, 25 March - 1 May 1988 Bibliography Magazine: Heute Kunst, Internationale Kunstzeitschrift, n°1, April 1973, Düsseldorf, n.p., illustrated in black and white (wrong dimensions) The cube became a veritable tool, one that 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 in networks, invading both real and conceptual space, profoundly transforming the way in which sculptural art is apprehended. After studying art in New York, LeWitt joined the studio of Ieoh Ming Pei, the future architect of the famous Louvre Pyramid, at the age of twenty-seven. Employed as a graphic designer, he experimented with the possibilities offered by geometry and seriality. The imprint of architecture left a lasting mark on the young artist's visual language, even in the vocabulary that LeWitt preferred to use to describe his works, preferring the term "structures" to "sculptures". Untitled (1972) is a remarkable example of the white-painted metal structures conceived by Sol LeWitt and first presented in 1965 at the John Daniels Gallery in New York. These iconic works from the first decades of experimentation have since been included in the permanent collections of major institutions in the United States and Europe (MoMA and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York - Art Institut, Chicago - Tate Modern, London - Centre Georges Pompidou and Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris), as well as in prestigious private collections around the world, such as that of Mr and Mrs Cluzel, to which this work belongs. The 1960s were seminal for LeWitt, whose practice also included drawing and the writing of two manifesto texts, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967) and Sentences on Conceptual Art (1969). In his writings and in the conceptualisation of his work, Sol LeWitt asserted the primacy of the idea over material execution. A pioneer and tutelary figure of Minimal and Conceptual Art, alongside his contemporaries Carl Andre and Dan Flavin, with whom he exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1966, Sol LeWitt questioned the 'concentration' of attention, both for the artist and for the viewer. "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, cat. exp. The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1978, p. 25) In his approach, the technical details, although secondary, always have a visual and experimental translation. By choosing an apparently simple motif, the artist gives form to a system of thought and makes it visible. From this exploration emerges a refined, serial, geometric sculptural vocabulary, in which the cube exists both individually and collectively, acting instantaneously on the viewer. Exploring the infinite variations permitted by the repetition and combination of the motif, LeWitt makes the work itself a place for reflection and experimentation. Resolutely oriented towards volume, Sol LeWitt projects his structures into space and questions our relationship with reality. Made of wood or metal, these sculptural constructions have rigorously defined proportions (in a constant ratio of 1 to 8.5 cm) and are uniformly painted white, reinforcing their neutrality, rigour and presence. Installed on the floor, they establish an immediate relationship with the visitor, who is invited to experience their scale, rhythm and existence. Based on notions of order and disorder, oscillating between transparency, density and lightness, light and shadow, the work seems to be constantly evolving as you move around it, depending on your point of view. In this way, the artist fully engages the viewer, who becomes an actor in the perceptual experience. Composed of 85 cubes, arranged in 5 rows and 5 columns, Untitled (1972) appears as a matrix work of this research, testifying to the complexity and diversity of Sol LeWitt's concepts, revealing in turn the contours of a cubic figure, a stepped pyramid or a waterfall. Presented on several occasions in France in the mid-1980s as part of exhibitions devoted to Minimal and Conceptual Art, notably in Dunkirk in 1986 and Tours in 1988, this work illustrates the importance of Sol LeWitt in the renewal of contemporary sculpture and in the affirmation of an art based on conceptualisation, perception and experience.
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About the sale Post-War & Contemporary Art including the Cluzel Collection
Auction location
Auction time 06/04/2026 at 4:00 PM
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