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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.

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Style: Conceptual
Linternas
Linternas

Linternas

By Erik Perez

Located in Mexico City, CDMX

An innate and atypical landscape artist, Eric Pérez is an intellectual who paints. He knows and loves Mexican and world history, from which he derives his contemporary context. His p...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Shaman
Shaman

Shaman

By John Petrey

Located in Rye, NY

John Petrey’s Shaman is a striking mixed-media sculpture that merges mythology, ritual, and contemporary artistry. The figure wears a robe of richly patterned patchwork, assembled fr...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

Ceramic, Leather, Fabric, Found Objects, Mixed Media

Morgan Library II, New York
Morgan Library II, New York

Morgan Library II, New York

By Reinhard Görner

Located in Los Angeles, CA

Morgan Library II New York 50 x 62.4 inches ed. of 10 $6,000 60 x 74.9 inches ed. of 7 $9,000 70 x 87.5 inches ed. of 5 $11,000 signed and numbered on label, verso Paper is trim...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

C Print, Lambda

Psychedelic Two Eyes Drawing, Mixed Media on Paper, Signed, 1970s
Psychedelic Two Eyes Drawing, Mixed Media on Paper, Signed, 1970s

Psychedelic Two Eyes Drawing, Mixed Media on Paper, Signed, 1970s

Located in Miami, FL

James Spanfeller (20th century) mixed media on board drawing. Signed lower right This artwork appeared on page 68 of the August 1970 issue of Playboy Magazine, illustrating the fict...

Category

1970s Conceptual Art

Materials

Paper, Ink, Watercolor, Pen

Untitled
Untitled

Untitled

By Juan Canals

Located in Barcelona, CT

The painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

Category

1990s Conceptual Art

Materials

Mixed Media

Drawing 14, Series Drawing - Large Format, Charcoal On Paper Panting
Drawing 14, Series Drawing - Large Format, Charcoal On Paper Panting

Drawing 14, Series Drawing - Large Format, Charcoal On Paper Panting

By Krzysztof Gliszczyński

Located in Hallein, AT

The artwork is unframed and will be shipped rolled in a tube Krzysztof Gliszczyński is Professor for painting on Academy of fine arts Gdansk. Krzysztof Gliszczyński born in Miastko in 1962. Graduated from the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts in 1987 in the studio of Prof. Kazimierz Ostrowski. Between 1995 and 2002 founder and co-manager of Koło Gallery in Gdańsk. lnitiator of the Kazimierz Ostrowski Award, con-ferred by the Union of Polish Artists and Designers (ZPAP), Gdańsk Chapter. Dean of the Painting Faculty of the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts in the years 2008-2012. Vice Rector for Development and Cooperation of the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts in the years 2012-2016. Obtained a professorship in 2011. Currently head of the Third Painting Studio of the Painting Faculty of the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts. He has taken part in a few dozen exhibitions in Poland and abroad. He has received countless prizes and awards for his artistic work. He is active in the field of painting, drawing, objects, and video. Artist Statement In the 1990s I started collecting flakes of paint – leftovers from my work. I would put fresh ones in wooden formworks, dried ones in glass containers. They constituted layers of investigations into the field of painting, enclosed in dated and numbered cuboids measuring 47 × 10.5 × 10.5 cm. I called those objects Urns. In 2016, I displayed them at an exhibition, moulding a single object out of all the Urns. The Urns inspired me to redefine the status of my work as a painter. In order to do it, I performed a daunting task of placing the layers of paint not in an urn, but on a canvas, pressing each fresh bit of paint with my thumb. In the cycle of paintings Autoportret a’retour, the matter was transferred from painting to painting, expanding the area of each consecutive one. Together, the bits, the residua of paint, kept alive the memory of the previous works. It was a stage of the atomization of the painting matter and its alienation from the traditional concepts and aesthetic relations. Thus, the cycle of synergic paintings was created, as I called them, guided by the feeling evoked in me by the mutually intensifying flakes of paint. The final aesthetic result of the refining of the digested matter was a consequence of the automatism of the process of layering, thumb-pressing, and scraping off again. Just like in an archaeological excavation, attempts are made to unite and retrieve that which has been lost. This avant-garde concept consists in transferring into the area of painting of matter, virtually degraded and not belonging to the realm of art. And yet the matter re-enters it, acquiring a new meaning. The matter I created, building up like lava, became my new technique. I called it perpetuum pictura – self-perpetuated painting. Alchemical concepts allowed me to identify the process inherent in the emerging matter, to give it direction and meaning. In a way, I created matter which was introducing me into the pre-symbolic world – a world before form, unnamed. From this painterly magma, ideas sprung up, old theories of colour and the convoluted problem of squaring the circle manifested themselves again. Just like Harriot’s crystal refracted light in 1605, I tried to break up colour in the painting Iosis. Paintings were becoming symptoms, like in the work Pulp fiction, which at that time was a gesture of total fragmentation of matter and of transcending its boundaries, my dialogue with the works of Jackson Pollock and the freedom brought by his art. The painting Geometrica de physiologiam pictura contains a diagram in which I enter four colours that constitute an introduction to protopsychology, alchemical transmutation, and the ancient theory of colour. It this work I managed to present the identification of the essence of human physiology with art. But the essential aspect of my considerations in my most recent paintings is the analysis of abstraction, the study of its significance for the contemporary language of art and the search for the possibilities of creating a new message. For me, abstraction is not an end in itself, catering to the largely predicable expectations of the viewers. To study the boundary between visibility and invisibility, like in the work Unsichtbar, is to ask about the status of the possibilities of the language of abstraction. The moment of fluidity which I am able to attain results from the matter – matter...

Category

Early 2000s Conceptual Art

Materials

Paper, Charcoal

Voodoo Altar: Feast for the Loa, Conceptual Oil on Masonite, 1960s
Voodoo Altar: Feast for the Loa, Conceptual Oil on Masonite, 1960s

Voodoo Altar: Feast for the Loa, Conceptual Oil on Masonite, 1960s

By Adam Leontus

Located in Miami, FL

Voodoo Altar: Feast for the Loa This work represents a convergence of religion, craft, and design, as well as the need for individual artistic expression. It is a visual feast as muc...

Category

1960s Conceptual Art

Materials

Oil, Masonite

Cell Phone Chargers, Conceptual Ultrachrome Inkjet Print by Chris Jordan
Cell Phone Chargers, Conceptual Ultrachrome Inkjet Print by Chris Jordan

Cell Phone Chargers, Conceptual Ultrachrome Inkjet Print by Chris Jordan

By Chris Jordan

Located in Long Island City, NY

“Cell Phone Chargers” is an ultrachrome pigmented inkjet print by American artist Chris Jordan (b. 1963), dated 2004, edition 9/9. The photograph depicts a dense mass of black cell p...

Category

Early 2000s Conceptual Art

Materials

Photography

Survival Pencils
Survival Pencils

Survival Pencils

By Jenny Holzer

Located in Toronto, Ontario

Jenny Holzer's menacing "Truisms" first appeared in 1983 when the artist was invited to participate in a group show exploring the themes and dialogue from George Orwell's "1984". O...

Category

1990s Conceptual Art

Materials

Pencil

MAYBE - large format photograph of conceptual motivational billboard at night
MAYBE - large format photograph of conceptual motivational billboard at night

MAYBE - large format photograph of conceptual motivational billboard at night

By Frank Schott

Located in San Francisco, CA

large scale photograph of a billboard signage against ultramarine blue night sky, from a series of conceptual motivational messages on iconic Americana roadside signs and billboards ...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Archival Pigment, Giclée

Quiet Matriarch - 21st Century, Contemporary, Figurative Portrait, Africa

Quiet Matriarch - 21st Century, Contemporary, Figurative Portrait, Africa

By John Ali

Located in Ibadan, Oyo

Shipping Procedure Ships in a well-protected tube from Nigeria This work is unique, not a print or other type of copy. Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity (Issued by the Gal...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Studio Muse - 21st Century, Contemporary, Figurative Portrait, Africa

Studio Muse - 21st Century, Contemporary, Figurative Portrait, Africa

By John Ali

Located in Ibadan, Oyo

Shipping Procedure Ships in a well-protected tube from Nigeria This work is unique, not a print or other type of copy. Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity (Issued by the Gal...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Wilhold Up the Mirror Photograph and Mixed Media Assemblage Wall Hanging Artwork
Wilhold Up the Mirror Photograph and Mixed Media Assemblage Wall Hanging Artwork

Wilhold Up the Mirror Photograph and Mixed Media Assemblage Wall Hanging Artwork

By Dennis Hopper

Located in Surfside, FL

Dennis Hopper, (American, 1936-2010) Mixed media sculpture "Outmolding Older Concepts (Wilhold Up the Mirror)", 1961, photo and assemblage, Ace gallery and Easy Rider Production labels verso 27"h x 40"w x 5"d. There is broken mirror glued into the wooden collage box with the ceramic head that is attached to the front. I assume that is how it was made. Provenance: Estate of Pentti Kouri, NYC; Ace Gallery, Los Angeles; Exhibited MOCA, Los Angeles, 2010 From a 1997 interview with Hopper where he references this piece "Right now it's very intense. I had a show that travelled Germany, about 15 different museums. Sunday we go to Denmark; I'm showing the early assemblage I did in 1961 which was the signal for conceptual art. I'm just two days there, then I'm going to Venice to meet Julian Schnabel - Count Volpe's given us a place to paint in Giudecca. Then I'm going to Documenta in Germany to hang another show, then I go back to LA on the 21st and start a film on the 23rd." Notes/Literature: Dr. Pentti Kouri(1949-2009) was a Finnish economist and venture capitalist with partner George Soros. He built his prestigious art collection with the goal of opening a private art foundation focused on his interests in Minimalism, Arte Povera, Conceptual and Text-based art. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Dia Art Foundation, and on the boards of Tate, London and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. In addition, a portion of his collection forms the core of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland Hopper made his film debut alongside James Dean in 1955's Rebel Without a Cause. Both lost souls from dysfunctional households, they gravitated to each other, smoked dope and took joy rides. When Dean died, Hopper saw himself as the natural inheritor of his rebellious mantle and, revelling in his nickname of "Dennis the Menace", gave it to Hollywood with both barrels; so they dropped him. Dennis didn't make another Hollywood movie for seven years. Frustrated by the deliberate stifling of his film career, Dennis turned to art and photography for creative stimulus, beginning with abstract subjects such as landscapes. His cutting-edge conceptual art became established round the world, with exhibitions in major cities. At home in the dining room stood one particularly interesting work, a white plastic box, eight feet long, that had an aluminium shaft sticking out of it, and two very large balls. It was called The Perpetual Erection Machine. Before Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, there was Dennis. In 1961, Hopper took part in an international photography competition in Australia with a contribution of five abstract photos, which he called Pieces. He won first place. Soon after, Hopper married Hayward, daughter of the film producer Leland Hayward, whose credits include The Sound of Music and South Pacific. The wedding party of Hopper and Hayward was held in August at the apartment of actress Jane Fonda, a childhood friend of Hayward, who introduced Hopper to her younger brother Peter Fonda. Their daughter Marin was born in 1961, and they moved to Bel Air, California. Soon afterward the famous Bel Air fire destroyed their home, including approximately three-hundred Abstract Expressionist works and hundreds of pages of poetry that Hopper had begun in the mid-1950s. Hopper and his actor friends Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn were close to many artists in California, especially assemblage artists Edward Kienholz, Wallace Berman, and George Herms, and artist/filmmaker Bruce Conner. As Hopper was denied work in film, he turned increasingly to his own artistic investigations. He started assembling objects with photographs (photo-assemblages) and conceptually questioning the relationships between “reality,” “illusion,” and “representation,” sometimes working under the guidance of Kienholz. “I was recording objects -in a photograph- and using the object the way it functioned, and then affixing the object itself to the record of the object, and using light and recreating the light of the real object, recreating the light in the gallery and having the record of the way it looked using natural light and raw canvas.” Hopper became a key figure in the L.A. art scene in the early 1960s, and his black-and-white photographs of artist friends were used occasionally for posters and announcements for the Ferus Gallery or for the covers of the magazine Artforum. In 1963, Henry Geldzahler, curator of twentieth-century art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, introduced Hopper to Andy Warhol. Coincidentally, the meeting occurred on the very day Warhol introduced the young British artist David Hockney to Geldzahler. A few months later, Warhol mounted An Exhibition by Andy Warhol at Ferus Gallery in L.A., showing his silkscreen paintings of Elvis...

Category

1960s Conceptual Art

Materials

Ceramic, Wood, Mixed Media

Untitled
Untitled

Untitled

By Maria Carbonero

Located in Barcelona, CT

The painting is being offered with a work and authenticity certificate

Category

Early 2000s Conceptual Art

Materials

Lithograph

LIE TO ME, Mixed Media Abstract Painting with Text
LIE TO ME, Mixed Media Abstract Painting with Text

LIE TO ME, Mixed Media Abstract Painting with Text

By Henri Bassmadjian

Located in Surfside, FL

Born in 1958. At his first personal exhibition (greeted by "Le Matin"), he is still a high school student. At the workshops of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he prefers the pers...

Category

1980s Conceptual Art

Materials

Oil Pastel, Gouache, Graphite

Monkey Time - Animal Painting By Marc Zimmerman
Monkey Time - Animal Painting By Marc Zimmerman

Monkey Time - Animal Painting By Marc Zimmerman

By Marc Zimmerman

Located in Carmel, CA

Playfl monkeys climb exotic colored plants clowning as only monkeys do. Monkey Time - Animal Painting - Oil on Canvas By Marc Zimmerman Marc Zimmerman creates playful paintings, ...

Category

Early 2000s Conceptual Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Tree Diva

Tree Diva

By Kat O'Neill

Located in New York, NY

Photograph of aged tree that is then brought to life through some acrylic touches. Photograph produced by Dye Sublimation - which means archival inks infused into aluminum. Abou...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

Metal

Chinese Contemporary Art by Su Yu - Cospaly
Chinese Contemporary Art by Su Yu - Cospaly

Chinese Contemporary Art by Su Yu - Cospaly

By Su Yu

Located in Paris, IDF

Oil on canvas Su Yu is a Chinese artist born in 1987 who lives and works in Beijing. He was an old student of prestigious art teachers as Shi Liang & Chen Danqing at Oil Paintin...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Cool Ducks

Cool Ducks

By Jim Molloy

Located in New York, NY

2 cool ducks floating. Fun. About the Artist: Jim Molloy is a studio and plein air painter. "I like to try to find and capture the beauty and simplicity of the world around u...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Morgan Library II, New York
Morgan Library II, New York

Morgan Library II, New York

By Reinhard Görner

Located in Los Angeles, CA

Morgan Library II New York 50 x 62.4 inches ed. of 10 $6,000 60 x 74.9 inches ed. of 7 $9,000 70 x 87.5 inches ed. of 5 $11,000 signed and numbered on label, verso Paper is trim...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

C Print, Lambda

Contemporary blue painting on paper, Seascape, Abstract Seaweeds
Contemporary blue painting on paper, Seascape, Abstract Seaweeds

Contemporary blue painting on paper, Seascape, Abstract Seaweeds

By TUSET

Located in Carballo, ES

This is an original artwork unframed realized by TUSET in 2020. We can frame it in natural wood or black on request. Dimensions: 65 x 50 cm Original and unique piece 1/1. Includes ...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

Materials

Ink, Handmade Paper

Artie - Pitbull/Boxer - Sculpture
Artie - Pitbull/Boxer - Sculpture

Artie - Pitbull/Boxer - Sculpture

By Will Kurtz

Located in New York, NY

Fun Dog sculpture from great sculptor. Comes with fun "dog poop" About the Artist: Will Kurtz was born in Flint, Michigan and received his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture ...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

Mixed Media

Comfort Zone Oil Painting on Canvas, Conceptual 21st Century Art
Comfort Zone Oil Painting on Canvas, Conceptual 21st Century Art

Comfort Zone Oil Painting on Canvas, Conceptual 21st Century Art

By John Ali

Located in Ibadan, Oyo

In the captivating artwork titled "Comfort Zone," artist John Ali masterfully captures the essence of introspection and the complex interplay between identity and personal space. The...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Conceptual Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Witching Hour

Witching Hour

Located in New York, NY

Oil on canvas. Dramatic. Female centric. Nighttime. Mysterious. About the artist: “There's a dry ironic twist to Paul’s paintings that give the work — while realistic — a postmodern feeling of reflection, observation and cultural critique. Somewhere between the Cohen Brothers...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

Mixed Media

Cherry Kobler - Columbia, original French vintage poster full lithograph
Cherry Kobler - Columbia, original French vintage poster full lithograph

Cherry Kobler - Columbia, original French vintage poster full lithograph

By Pierre Marrast

Located in Spokane, WA

Evidently, Cherry Kobler was a woman who composed songs and sang them while accompanying herself on the piano. Why she chose a fruity dessert as a stage name is anyone's guess. According to the French files of Columbia Records...

Category

1930s Conceptual Art

Materials

Lithograph

Singapore Stamp Collection, 30c Singapore Orchid Green - Floral color photo
Singapore Stamp Collection, 30c Singapore Orchid Green - Floral color photo

Singapore Stamp Collection, 30c Singapore Orchid Green - Floral color photo

By Heidler & Heeps

Located in Cambridge, GB

30 Cents Singapore Orchid Green, from the Heidler & Heeps Stamp Collection. This historic postage stamps that make up the Heidler & Heeps Stamp Collection, Singapore Series 'Postcards from Afar' have been given a twenty-first century pop art lease of life. The fine detailed tapestry of the original small postage stamp has been brought to life, made unique by the franking stamp and Heidler & Heeps specialist darkroom process. This artwork is a limited edition of 25 gloss photographic c-print, dry-mounted to aluminium, presented in a museum board white window mount and a choice of black or white box frame fitted with anti-reflective UV70% glass. It is signed and numbered on reverse accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. This artwork is available in other sizes. Be sure to look at Heidler & Heeps other artworks listed on 1stDibs as they are great paired for interior design projects. Following on from the hugely successful ‘Vinyl Collection’, Natasha Heidler & Richard Heeps have collaborated again, drawing from the childhood past time of stamp collecting...

Category

2010s Conceptual Art

Materials

Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Silver Gelatin

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.