Serial art
Description
Serial art is an art movement within conceptual art in which elements or objects, frequently uniform and machine-made (for example, bricks), were assembled, often in a systematic way. Read more ↗
Key Artists
Sol LeWitt
Leading practitioner and theorist of Serial art who systematically explored permutations of cubes and grids without personal hierarchy or subjective decision-making.
Eva Hesse
Pioneered serial repetition using organic, tactile materials like latex, fiberglass, and cord, introducing psychological complexity and imperfection into systematic structures.
Hanne Darboven
German conceptual and serial artist who covered thousands of framed pages with numerical calculations, linear markings, and calendrical systems documenting time.
Mel Bochner
Pioneered conceptual seriality through counting systems, grid drawings, and measurements applied directly to gallery walls.
Bernd and Hilla Becher
German photography duo who created rigorous serial typologies of industrial water towers, blast furnaces, and grain elevators arranged in grid formations.
Josef Albers
Precursor and foundational influence whose extensive 'Homage to the Square' variation series demonstrated systemic color relativity within a fixed modular template.
Famous Artworks
Fun Facts
The defining institutional recognition for Serial art occurred in late 1967 with the landmark exhibition 'Art in Series' at the Finch College Museum of Art in New York, curated by Elayne Varian.
↗ Source: tate.org.uk
In his writings on seriality, Sol LeWitt emphasized that unlike conventional series where works share a loose stylistic theme, true serial art requires a non-hierarchical, predetermined mathematical or logical system where every part is of equal importance.
↗ Source: tate.org.uk