Sol LeWitts Studio Drawings in the Vecchia Torre

Book excerpt: An intimate look at American artist Sol LeWitt’s masterpiece of conceptual art, drawn on the walls of a medieval tower in Italy. In 1976, Sol LeWitt made a large group of pencil drawings on the internal walls of the Vecchia Torre, a medieval tower in the Umbrian town of Spoleto, Italy. These fragile drawings, made on walls that are susceptible to degradation, have rarely been seen and never been documented, yet they represent one of LeWitt’s major works and a milestone in American conceptual art. This groundbreaking volume brings together an extended essay on LeWitt’s work by art historian Rye Dag Holmboe and a series of 60 photographic plates of the drawings by artist Joschi Herczeg, giving readers an intimate experience of this singular, site-specific work. A visual archive, this book situates LeWitt’s provisional, material, bodily, and highly personal drawings in their historical, biographical, and theoretical contexts. The result is nothing less than a reconsideration of LeWitt’s lifework. At once a work of conservation and a reflection on the relationship between drawing and architecture, Sol LeWitt’s Studio Drawings in the Vecchia Torre sheds new and welcome light on an unseen masterpiece.