Item ID: 7534 Autobiography. Sol LEWITT.
Autobiography.

With an Original LeWitt Drawing

Autobiography.

Numerous black & white illus. throughout. [127] pp. Large 4to (261 x 262 mm.), orig. printed wrappers & orig. glossy pictorial dust-jacket, price unclipped. New York City: Multiples, Inc., 1980.

First edition of LeWitt’s celebrated book, in which he meticulously records with photographs the possessions in his studio and home; this is a superb copy with a signed and dated original drawing inscribed by LeWitt “for Richard Wr—? / Sol LeWitt / Las Cruces / Nov. 20, 1981” on the recto of the front free endpaper. Nearly every page in this work comprises, in a 3 x 3 grid, nine photographs taken by LeWitt of his home and studio. It is a fascinating window into the life of this very private artist. In these photographs we encounter his collections of Japanese prints, his own artists’ books, music, type samples, art ephemera, books, photographs, family heirlooms, sculptures, etc.

In Esthétique du Livre d’Artiste: Une Introduction à l’art contemporain (2nd ed.: 2012) Moeglin-Delcroix writes (p. 275), “In giving a tour, methodically, exhaustively, of all that fills up his studio, [LeWitt] seems to recount his life through the photographs of his family bric-à-brac…Despite the title, despite as well the small indiscreet pleasure that one takes in penetrating the universe where an artist, whose impersonal structures were all that we knew until now (did we know that he listened to Lassus and Bach, that he read Beckett and Chandler, that he admired Japanese prints and popular imagery?), the interest is somewhere else, as is the presence of Sol LeWitt elsewhere. [His presence] asserts itself with force, because it is entirely active there, in the book itself.”

A near fine copy, enhanced by a classic “Lines in Four Directions” drawing executed and signed by LeWitt for the recipient; faint sunning to the edges of the dust-jacket and very minor wear to the corners. Two pairs of leaves are unopened at the end.

❧ A. Moeglin-Delcroix, Esthétique du Livre d’Artiste: Une Introduction à l’art contemporain (2nd ed.: 2012), pp. 275-76 (pictured on p. 276). S. Bury, Artists’ Books: The Book as a Work of Art, 1963-2000 (2nd ed.: 2015), pp. 89 (pictured) & 204. D. Schwarz, ed., Multiples, Inc.: 1965-1992 (2021) 1980.13 (pictured on p. 117).

Price: $3,500.00

Item ID: 7534

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