Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 4: Digital Era (1960s)

1968

Sol LeWitt Brings His Wall Drawings

Artwork

Two adjacent square wall drawings made from dense, fine intersecting pencil lines.
Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 1: Drawing Series II 18 (A & B), conceived in 1968. Later realization documented by SFMOMA. © The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Doris and Donald Fisher Collection; image: SFMOMA. Photographer not identified. Image source.

Begun in 1968 and continuing until his death in 2007, LeWitt’s seminal Wall Drawings were important examples of randomness in systems-based art. These instruction-based works of conceptual installation art also challenged the notions of authorship and permanence as LeWitt made the instructions for the drawings yet did not necessarily execute them himself.

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.

Sources

People

Sol LeWitt

Movements

Chance Art, conceptual art, generative art, Installation Art, Material Generative Art, instruction art

Filed under

Ideas
authorship, Chance Art, conceptual art, drawing, generative art, Installation Art, Material Generative Art, permanence, randomness, systems
People
Sol LeWitt
Works
Wall Drawings

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