Skip to main content

Conceptual Art

CONCEPTUAL STYLE

In 1967, artist Sol LeWitt wrote that in “Conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.” He was giving a name to an art movement that had emerged in the 1960s in which artists were less focused on their medium being something traditionally “artistic” and instead engaged in using any object, movement, form, action or place to express an idea.

LeWitt’s work was featured alongside an assemblage of notes, drawings and outlines by other artists in “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art,” a groundbreaking show at New York City’s School of Visual Arts curated by Mel Bochner, another leading exponent of Conceptualism. Building on radical 20th-century statements, like Fountain (1917) by French artist Marcel Duchamp, Conceptual artists around Europe and North and South America were not interested in the commercial art scene and rather directly challenged its systems and values.

Stretching into the 1970s, this movement has also been called Post-Object art and Dematerialized art. Conceptual art reflected a larger era of social and political upheaval. Pieces associated with the style range from Roelof Louw’s Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges) (1967) — a work of installation art that sees fresh oranges stacked into a pyramid from which visitors are allowed to take one orange away — to On Kawara’s “Today” series, which saw the Japanese artist carefully painting a date in white acrylic on canvases consisting of a single color from 1966 to his death in 2014. Artists such as Ed Ruscha, who created the Twentysix Gasoline Stations book — a collection of photos of gas stations that is widely said to be the first modern artists’ book — made photography a major platform for Conceptual art, as did Bruce Nauman, who burned one of Ruscha's books and then photographed it for his own.

Conceptual art’s legacy of questioning artistic authorship, ownership and how to work with complex ideas of space and time had a significant influence on the decades of culture that followed, and it continues to inform art today.

The collection of Conceptual photography, paintings and sculptures on 1stDibs includes artworks by John Baldessari, Jenny Holzer, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth and others.

to
282
431
289
368
377
758
Overall Width
to
Overall Height
to
1
3
637
1,582
3
2
1
10
65
200
165
114
116,269
65,179
53,631
26,983
14,663
8,679
6,031
5,811
4,155
3,013
2,537
2,267
2,232
728
1,097
682
190
619
290
213
196
175
159
144
122
117
110
107
103
99
90
83
79
76
73
65
50
537
418
394
324
303
273
85
77
49
35
188
378
1,413
580
Style: Conceptual
RIC: Random Internet Cat #7
Located in New York, NY
Random Internet Cats 
Robotically-fabricated drawings on paper, these series formally deal with mediation from screen image to ‘drawing’ while using a computer-controlled pen plotte...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

RIC: Random Internet Cat #3
Located in New York, NY
Random Internet Cats 
Robotically-fabricated drawings on paper, these series formally deal with mediation from screen image to ‘drawing’ while using a computer-controlled pen plotte...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

RIC: Random Internet Cat #2
Located in New York, NY
Random Internet Cats 
Robotically-fabricated drawings on paper, these series formally deal with mediation from screen image to ‘drawing’ while using a computer-controlled pen plotte...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

Sonica Whispers
Located in New York, NY
Sonica Whispers
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

Materials

Archival Pigment

Conceptual art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Conceptual art available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add art created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, purple, orange, red and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Reinhard Görner, Kojun, Jose Sierra, and xulong zhang. Frequently made by artists working with Paper, and Paint and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Conceptual art, so small editions measuring 1 inches across are also available. Prices for art made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $45 and tops out at $500,000, while the average work sells for $2,465.

Recently Viewed

View All