Flux & Stasis
Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007)
Horizontal Wavy Brushstrokes in Color, 2006
Unique linocut monoprint
24 x 48 in; 61 x 121.9 cm
Signed ‘LeWitt’ lower right in graphite
Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007)
Tilted Forms with Colors Superimposed, 1989
Silkscreen
10 1/2 x 45 in; 26 x 114 cm
Signed and numbered lower right in graphite
Edition of 30
Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007)
Curved Bands (Diptych), 1997
Set of two etchings with aquatint on Somerset textured white paper
Edition of 36, 8 AP
20 x 83 in; 50.8 x 210.8 cm
Signed and numbered lower right on second sheet in graphite
Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) was born in Hartford, Connecticut to Eastern European immigrants.
In 1953, he moved to New York City, where he studied at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now the School of Visual Arts) and worked for Seventeen Magazine, making paste-ups, mechanicals and Photostats. He was then hired as a graphic designer in I.M. Pei’s architecture firm.
LeWitt was also interested in Russian Constructivism, with its engineering aesthetic and the idea of making utilitarian art in an industrialised age. LeWitt was influenced by Eadweard Muybridge’s serial photography, sequential studies of people and animals in motion. In the early 1960s, LeWitt produces works on canvas coated with thick gestural oil paint, each featured one of Muybridge’s figures in motion.
Evolving from the works of 1960s, LeWitt began to clarify his colours, lines and forms which creates a rather sterilised form itself. At this point his works have somewhat became ‘a serial photography itself’, which can be communicated as flux in its contents and stasis in its presentation.
In the exhibition catalogue for Think with Senses — Feel with Mind, Art in the Present, part of the 2007 Venice Biennale, Robert Storr wrote that “LeWitt proved over and over again that the strict, systematic realisation of a singular working premise is bound to produce results that will surprise both the maker and the viewer by exceeding expectation and giving eye-and-mind expanding physical dimensions to mental abstractions.”
Until 2033, LeWitt’s wall drawings are the subject of a solo exhibition titled Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Writing source from: https://www.sollewittprints.org/biography/
John Baldessari (American, 1931-2020)
One and Three Persons (with Two context-One Chaotic), 1991/2012
Eleven-color lithograph and screenprint
48 x 37 3/8 in; 121.9 x 94.9 cm
Signed and dated lower right, numbered lower left in graphite
Edition of 48
John Baldessari (1931-2020) was born in National City, California. He attended San Diego State Univerisity and did post-graduate work at Otis Art Institute, Chouinard Art Institute and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA from 1970-1988 and the University of California at Los Angeles from 1996-2007.
Baldessari’s artwork has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions and in over 1000 group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. His projects include artist books, videos, films, billboards and public works.
Baldessari’s enigmatic works have been coupled with fragmented body parts with coloured planes, three-dimensional forms, and language. Throughout his artwork, Baldessari explores the relationship between the separate parts and the whole. This hybrid visual language evokes multiple interpretations that involves a shift of meaning in itself.
Recently Museo Jumex held a retrospective titled “Learning to Read with John Baldessari,” in Mexico City, 2017. Editions have been showcased at Gemini G.E.L. and Mixografia in Los Angeles, CA 2017-2019, and the Laguna Museum of Art in 2019. John Baldessari Catalogue Raisonné, Volume Five: 2005-2010 was published by Yale University Press in 2018, Volume Six 2011-2019 is forthcoming, 2020.
His awards and honours include memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Americans for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, the BACA International 2008, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded by La Biennale di Venezia and the City of Goslar Kaiserring in 2012. He has received honorary degrees from the national University of Ireland, San Diego State University, Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, and California College of the Arts.
Writing source from:
https://www.krakowwitkingallery.com/artists/john_baldessari/?bio
https://www.marlboroughgraphicsnewyork.com/artists/john-baldesarri