NEW YORK—In 1968, artist Sol LeWitt executed his first wall drawing at Paula Cooper’s gallery on Prince Street in SoHo. More than thirty years later, LeWitt will unveil a series of new wall drawings in the first formal one-person exhibition to be held at 521 West 21st Street, the Chelsea gallery’s second space. These works will be on view from 15 September through 23 December, 1999.

Sweeping vistas of multi-colored swirls and configurations created with latex house paint span the four walls of the main gallery. Two large skylights illuminate the space, which measures approximately 2,000 square feet. Covering the room from floor to ceiling, these various combinations of bright purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red hues result in a gesamtkunstwerk of color.

Followers of LeWitt’s art may notice the presence of patterns employed in earlier works, expressed in this installation by multi-tiered bands of contrasting colors. A singular “blob” shape from a series of earlier gouaches reappears in a fluid succession of undulating lines. The familiar symmetry of vertical striations progresses into multi-hued spheres similarly defined by precise, autonomous rings of color. Writing in 1996, one curator noted, “Few would have predicted that LeWitt, who twenty years ago was restricting his palette to black and white […], would become one of the most luxuriant colorists of our time.” 1

A retrospective of Sol LeWitt’s work is scheduled to open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on February 19 — May 30, 2000, traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, July — September 2000 and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, November 2000 — February 2001.

1. Andrea Miller-Keller, essay, Of Sun and Stars: Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings, catalogue for exhibition at the 23rd International Bienal of São Paulo, Brazil, 1996, p. 34.

For more information, please contact the gallery: (212) 255-1105 or info@paulacoopergallery.com