Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 2: Modern Era (1850–1949)
1923
Mavo movement founded in Japan

Led by Tomoyoshi Murayama, this radical Japanese art movement promulgated an interdisciplinary array of performance art, painting, illustration and architecture to communicate anti-establishment messages to the mainstream. Reacting to Japan’s rapid modernization and industrial development, the Mavo group’s works focused on crisis, peril and uncertainty. Mavo sought to reintegrate art into daily life, a concept predating New Tendencies and GRAV by 40 years. Mavo thus was critical to the advancement of audience participation in art, an important concept in digital art.
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.
Sources
People
Movements
Mavo
Filed under
- Ideas
- architecture, audience participation, illustration, painting, performance
- People
- Tomoyoshi Murayama
- Organisations
- Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV), Mavo, New Tendencies
- Places
- Japan
Echoes across time
- 2021 · Unstable Presence by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at SFMOMA
- 1997 · Cities on the move: Contemporary Asian Art at the turn of the 21st c., Vienna
- 2022 · Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Common Measures by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at Pace
Le Random editorials
Le Random podcast
- Timeline Ch 2—Modern Era with Kate Vass — listen with transcript on Le Random (20 Jul 2023, 58 min). Chapter 2’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify