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Conceptual Sculptures

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
Period: 1970s
Found Object Wall Sculpture/Relief by Gertie Lowe
By Gertie Lowe
Located in Long Island City, NY
Wall sculpture assemblage by Gertie Lowe, from 1978, is a conceptual abstract with everyday objects. Muted neutral tones are contrasted with vibrant accents. Signed and dated verso...
Category

1970s Conceptual Sculptures

Materials

Plastic, Wood

Enrico Embroli Mixed Media Sculptural Canvas Ceramic 1970's Rare Framed Painting
By Enrico Embroli
Located in Buffalo, NY
An original unique mixed media painting and sculptural creation by well listed artist Enrico Embrolli. Enrico Embroli is a mixed media artist born in the small Western New York town...
Category

1970s Conceptual Sculptures

Materials

Ceramic, Animal Skin, Oil

Floor Chimes (Sonambient)
Located in Long Island City, NY
This modern abstract bronze sculpture by Bruggemann is characteristic of his work. His works derive from and depend largely upon elemental laws of physics and kinetic principles, approaching the practical limits of artistic statement combined with supreme craftsmanship. Artist: Winni Brueggemann, German Title: Floor Chimes...
Category

1970s Conceptual Sculptures

Materials

Bronze

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Jo Yarrington, Mute-Ability_Composition 1, 2019_acrylic, steel, player piano rol
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Jo Yarrington’s photographs, prints, works on paper, glass sculptures and architecturally-based installations have been shown in exhibitions at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Yale University, Cornell University, the Museum of Glass, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Artists Space, St. John the Divine Cathedral, Grounds for Sculpture, the Museum of American Glass and ODETTA, among others. International exhibitions have included Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow Cathedral, Glasgow University, Galeria Sala Uno and Centro de las Artes de Guanajuato. She represented the United States at the Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates and participated in the Berlin Biennial. in 2010 she received the Bronze Prize, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia. Yarrington is a recipient of artist grants and Fellowships from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. She has received Residency Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Museum of Glass, the Museum of American Glass, the Bridge Virtual Residency/ SciArt Center, the Lucile Walton Fellow/Mountain Lake Biological Station, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Anderson Center and the Ucross Foundation, among others. International grants and fellowships have included the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity/Canada, SIMS Residency/ Iceland, Cill Rialaig Artists Residency/Ireland, the Burren College of Art Residency/Ireland and the American Scandinavian Foundation. She is a Professor of Visual and Performing Arts at Fairfield University and lives and works in New York City. STATEMENT In site-specific exhibitions, public art commissions, collaborative and individual projects Jo Yarrington has used varied combinations of glass, waxed surfaces, found artifacts and experimental analog photography to investigate the way we perceive – searching for, experimenting with and developing throughout a sensory-based vernacular. Her mostly translucent materials function as physical framework and symbolic membrane. Light, both natural and ambient, provides a kinetic or time-based element to her work. Scale and the integration of architecture are also pivotal components. In the 6-part installation for the two-person exhibition Illuminated, Yarrington continues her interest in the connections between vision, sound and language. In Mute-ability: Compositions 1 – 6, her title for this light-based comprehensive work, she combines the words mute and malleability. The work focuses on found piano rolls, a music storage medium, originally conceived as coded notations or ‘note control data’ for music produced in pneumatic player pianos...
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Fritz Horstman, Formwork for Branching Stream, 2017, Wood, Walnut
Located in Darien, CT
While working on a large building project several years ago the artist, Fritz Horstman was struck by the poetry in the unfinished state of the construction site. He was drawn specifically to the space between the plywood walls that were raised as formworks for the pouring of cement. That space could only exist for a few hours before the cement truck...
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Crow Pot
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Gérard Cambon was born in 1960 in Toulouse (Fr). He has a degree in political science and is a self-taught artist. In the earlier years of his life practiced and experimented with collage and model making. Later, with an interest in old machines and patinas he started collecting old and used objects, tools, and fragments of items whose previous lives remained obvious. When he travels, one of his greatest pleasures is to find materials in antique shops or ironmongeries. In 1994, he began creating Locomobiles and reliefs and presented them to the public for the first time at “La Jeune Peinture,” a Parisian art fair. In 1995 , he stayed during 8 months in the hospital for eight months (leukaemia) where he began preparing and creating plans for new Locomobiles and reliefs. As his health improved, he committed himself to his artwork and during the same year met a Parisian gallery owner who decided to organize a solo show for him, Le Galerie Beatrice Soulie in Saint Germain des Pres. He has shown his work since 1996 in Paris and since 2000 in the United States (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle). He is currently being shown by galleries in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg , Denmark, and the United States. He keeps on trying out new materials (fabric, leather, glass, plants, metals,…) that he integrates into his bas-reliefs: traction engines...
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Previously Available Items
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Conceptual sculptures for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Conceptual sculptures 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 sculptures created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, red, orange, purple and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Beatrice De Domenico, Scott Froschauer, Jo Yarrington, and Kojun. Frequently made by artists working with Metal, and mixed media 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 sculptures, so small editions measuring 1 inches across are also available. Prices for sculptures 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 $125 and tops out at $500,000, while the average work sells for $3,220.

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