Beautiful Ideas: The Prints of Sol LeWitt

Regarded as one of the founders of both minimalism and conceptual art, Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) is best known for his large-scale wall drawings and modular structures. Alongside these works, LeWitt generated more than 350 print projects during his 40-year artistic career, including thousands of lithographs, silkscreens, etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, and linocuts. Printmaking proved to be the perfect medium for LeWitt’s brand of conceptual art, in which the “idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” Beautiful Ideas: The Prints of Sol LeWitt explores the artist’s extensive body of prints, beginning with his earliest works and extending through his mature expressions in abstraction. Organized in four thematic sections—”Lines, Arcs, Circles, and Grids,” “Bands and Colors,” “From Geometric Figures to Complex Forms,” and “Wavy, Curvy, Loopy Doopy, and in All Directions”—the exhibition reflects the bold geometric shapes and precise lines that defined LeWitt’s artistic style.

Beautiful Ideas: The Prints of Sol LeWitt is organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art and curated by David S. Areford, professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The exhibition includes 41 objects, consisting of single prints and print series, for a total of over 100 prints.

A related scholarly publication, Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints is available, produced in 2020.

Museum Hours:
Daily: 11 am–5 pm

Photo: Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). Loopy Doopy, Blue/Red, 2000. Oil-based woodcut, 20 5/8 x 28 5/8 in. New Britain Museum of American Art, Gift of Sol LeWitt © Estate of Sol LeWitt 2025.