One of the most important and influential contemporary artists, Sol LeWitt has created a significant body of work in different media, including sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and photography. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, LeWitt received a B.F.A. from Syracuse University (1949), beginning his career as a painter but later abandoning the flat surface of the canvas in favor of three-dimensional minimalist forms. During the 1960s, he and other artists of his generation challenged the basic nature of art by developing conceptual art, which holds that the idea behind a work of art is as important as its eventual visualization. While his art tends to be systematic and intellectual, LeWitt acknowledges the arbitrary and unexpected that arise from the creative process, and that the viewer's response is incidental to the artist's intention. According to this philosophy, his photographs document what he makes, acting as proof of the creative process but also as independent art objects that relate to specific projects. LeWitt's photographic works have been included in several group exhibitions, including Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1978), Target III: In Sequence at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1982), Special Collections: The Photographic Order from Pop to Now at the International Center of Photography, New York (1992), and Beyond Boundaries: Art of the Sixties and Seventies at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1993). The Cleveland Museum of Art also owns a sculpture by LeWitt. He lives in New York. A.W.