1970

Harriet Korman mounts first solo exhibition at Galerie Rolf Ricke in Cologne, Germany

Katja Strunz is born in Ottweiler, Germany

Lotte Lyon is born in Graz, Austria

Friedrich Karl Engemann dies on January 24

Terry Haggerty is born on November 13 in London, England

Anselm Reyle is born in Tubingen, Germany

Helio Oiticica moves to New York City; Participates in exhibition "Information" at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City; Receives Guggenheim Fellowship

Lygia Clark works on the Arquitecturas Biologicas

"Information" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Formally establishes conceptual art as a leading tendency in the United States

"Spaces" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Features artists Michael Asher, Larry Bell, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris and Franz Erhard Walther; Curated by Jennifer Licht

The Metropolitan Museum of Art mounts the exhibition "New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940 to 1970" curated by Henry Geldzahler; It consisted of 408 works by 43 artists and filled 35 galleries, the largest and most prestigious show of its kind

Robert Smithson creates earthwork “Spiral Jetty” on the Great Salt Lake in Utah

Blinky Palermo and Gerhard Richter travel together to New York City

Mary Heilman solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Lee Lozano solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Al Loving: Paintings exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Gordon Matta-Clark and Jeffrey Lee found 112 Workshop, an alternative exhibition and performance space at 112 Greene Street, New York, NY

Frank Stella retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Jonas Mekas founds Anthology Film Archives at the Joseph Papp Public Theater on Lafayette Street, New York, NY

Eva Hesse dies in New York, NY

Barnett Newman dies

Mark Rothko commits suicide in his studio on February 25  in New York, New York

Manfred Mohr mounts world’s first museum solo exhibition of computer-generated art at the Musee d-Art Modern, Paris, France

Fritz Glarner moves from the United States back to Switzerland

Alberto Magnelli dies on April 20 in Meudon, France

Irene Rice Pereira dies on January 11 in Marbella, Spain

Richard Schur is born in Munich, Germany

Gego exhibits Chorros at her one-person exhibition "Gego, Sculpture and Drawing" at Betty Parsons Gallery, New York City

Helio Oiticica realizes environmental project Rhodislandia:Contact at Rhode Island University

Lygia Clark's one-person exhibition at Galeria Ralph Camargo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Josef Albers' retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alanna Heiss founds The Institute of Art and Urban Resources (later P.S.1), New York, the first arts organizations in the United States dedicated solely to contemporary art; Organizes exhibitions at The Clocktower space

Whitney Museum of American Art mounts the exhibitions "Lyrical Abstraction" and "The Structure of Color"

Linda Nochlin's essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists" is published in ArtNews

Artists Steina and Woody Vasulka found The Kitchen, the first dedicated film and video exhibition space in New York, NY

Mel Bochner: 3 Ideas & 7 Procedures exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

The artist-run Food Restaurant is founded by Gordon Matta-Clark, Suzanne Harris, Tina Girouard, Rachel Lew, Caroline Goodden and others at 127 Prince Street, New York, NY

Howard Buchwald, Joan Snyder, Alan Sondheim and Michael Venezia exhibition at Bykert Gallery, New York, NY

"American Painting of the Sixties, from the Michener Collection" exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas

Barnett Newman retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Jane Kaufman solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Curated by Marcia Tucker

420 West Broadway gallery building opens housing Leo Castelli, Sonnabend, Andre Emmerich, and Weber Galleries

Fanny Sanin moves to New York, NY

Lee Lozano leaves New York City

Douglas Witmer is born in Winchester, Virginia; Raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Jeremy Blake is born on October 4 in Fort Still, Oklahoma

Geoffrey Bardon, a Euro-Australian schoolteacher in the Aboriginal community of Papunya in the Western Desert, encourages a group of senior Aboriginal men to paint a mural depicting an important local Dreaming (creation story) on the wall of the community school; The men go on to create smaller paintings in acrylic on plywood, linoleum, and later art board and canvas; These works represent the first contemporary Western Desert acrylic paintings, also sometimes called "dot" paintings because of their distinctive dotted backgrounds; As the popularity, critical acclaim, and sales of Western Desert paintings grows, other desert communities, such as Yuendumu, Lajamanu, Utopia, and Balgo, which share a common iconography with Papunya, begin to produce paintings in a similar style

Stefan Abrams is born in Johannesburg, South Africa

Michael Graeve is born in Melbourne, Australia

Simon Ingram is born in Wellington, New Zealand

The traveling exhibition "SYSTEMS" organized by the Arts Council (travels through 1973); Features Richard Allen, John Ernest, Michael Kidner, Peter Lowe, Jeffrey Stelle, Gillian Wise, and other

Fritz Glarner dies in Locarno, Switzerland

Fred Forbat dies on May 22 in Vällingby, Sweden

Leo Leuppi dies in Zurich, Switzerland

Monika Sosnowska is born in Ryki, Poland

Helio Oiticica exhibits Metaesquemas at Ralph Camargo Gallery, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Lygia Clark teaches course on gestural communication at the Sorbonne, Paris; Participates in exhibition "The Non-Objective World 1935-1955", exhibition travels to London and Milan

Judy Gerowitz adopts the name Judy Chicago

The Feminist Art Journal is founded

"Eva Hesse: A Memorial Exhibition" at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

A.I.R. Gallery is founded as a women's cooperative gallery

Alma Thomas mounts a solo exhibition of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; She is the first African-American woman to do so at the Whitney Museum

Artists Space is founded by Irving Sandler and Trudie Grace

"Three Artists: Mary Heilmann, Joan Snyder, Pat Steir" exhibition at the Fine Arts Center, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI

Max Gimblett moves to New York City

Matthew Deleget is born on May 26 in Hammond, Indiana

Douglas Melini is born

Sylvan Lionni is born in Cuckfield, England

Hans Volger dies on July 15

Walter Dexel dies in Braunschweig

Jeremy Moon dies in London,  England

The Jesus Rafael Soto Museum of Modern Art is established in Cuidad Bolivar, Venezuela

Helio Oiticica creates concept of Quasi-cinema

Eduardo Clark makes documentary "O mundo de Lygia Clark"

Waldemar Cordeiro dies in Brazil

Ivan Serpa dies

Agnes Martin mounts first career retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, organized by Suzanne Delehanty

SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, is saved from destruction by the advocacy group Lower-Manhattan Township and designated an historical district

Donald Judd purchases and moves into a former military facility in Marfa, Texas

Joe Overstreet and wife Corrine Jennings found the pioneering artists space Kenkeleba House on the Bowery, New York, NY; Exhibits works by African-American, Latino, Asian-American, and Native-American artists

Lynda Benglis solo exhibition at The Clocktower, New York, NY

Rosalind Kraus publishes her essay "Sense and Sensibility" asserting that the formal qualities of Minimalism were significant primarily as the expression of a new idea of the self; Rather than expressing the artist's unique subjectivity, Minimal art demonstrated that there was no such thing as self

In December, Blinky Palermo moves to New York, NY (stays through 1976)

Jackson Pollock's painting "Blue Poles" sells for $2 million at auction, a record for an American art work

Joan Snyder leaves New York City for Pennsylvania

Stanton Macdonald-Wright dies

Robert Smithson dies in Amarillo, Texas

The Sydney Opera House, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, opens

Yayoi Kusama leaves New York City permanently for Japan

Vicente Butron emigrates from The Philipinnes to Australia

Salvatore Panatteri is born on September 18 in Sydney, NSW, Australia

Jeena Shin is born in Seoul, South Korea

Justin Andrews is born in Melbourne, Australia

Olivier Mosset begins making stripe paintings (through 1978)

Adrian (Ad) Dekkers dies in Gorinchem

Yury Annenkov dies on July 18 in Paris, France

Willem van Leusden dies on March 8 in Maarssen, The Netherlands

Heiner Friedrich and Philippa de Menil found the Dia Art Foundation, dedicated to supporting individual artists and to providing long-term, in-depth presentations of their art

Rene Block and Heiner Friedrich open galleries in Soho, New York, NY; Bykert Gallery opens an annex space in Soho

Max Bill's retrospective exhibition opens at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY; Tours to Los Angeles and San Francisco (1974-1975)

Walter de Maria creates second “earth room” sculpture at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, Germany

Agnes Martin begins painting again

Jesús Rafael Soto retrospective opens at the Guggenheim Museum, New York

Anne Truitt retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, and Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC

Ree Morton solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Jack Whitten solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Joan Snyder & Pat Steir exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA

Blinky Palermo and Imi Knoebel go on a roadtrip across America, visting the Rothko Chapel in Houston and Walter de Maria's land near Las Vegas

Jack Whitten mounts a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Charles G. Shaw dies in New York City

The exhibition "Fundamental Painting / Fundamentele Schilderkunst" is mounted at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Leo Breuer dies in Bonn, Germany

Barbara Hepworth dies in St. Ives

Hans Uhlmann dies in Berlin, Germany

Benoit Gollety is born in Marseille, France

Josef Pohl dies on November 20 in Tittmoning, Bayern, Germany

Richard Tuttle retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Jo Baer exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

ArtForum magazine publishes a special issue on painting, including a questionnaire positing the obsolescence of painting and asking painters to respond to this idea

"Mel Bochner, Barry Le Va, Dorothea Rockburne, Richard Tuttle" exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH

ArtForum devotes a special issue to painting

Art-Rite devotes an issue to painting, edited by Edit de Ak and Walter Robinson

Agnes Martin joins Pace Gallery (now PaceWildenstein Gallery) in New York City

Alfred Arndt dies on October 7 in Darmstadt

Sándor Bortnyik dies on December 3 in Budapest, Hungary

Olivier Guessele-Garai is born in Paris, France

Politically-charged conceptual art in Latin America draws to a close as many countries become democratized

Gego begins working on her Dibujos sin Papel

Blinky Palermo paints series "To the People of New York City" (thru 1977); Leaves New York City in 1976

Irving Sandler publishes the book "The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties"

Printed Matter is founded in New York City

Josef Albers dies on March 25 in New Haven, Connecticut

Alexander Calder dies

Mark Tobey dies

John McLaughlin dies in Dana Point, California

The DaimlerChrysler Collection is founded in Germany focusing on abstract and geometric pictoral concepts

Blinky Palermo dies on February 17 on Kurumba Island, Maldives

Commissioned by the Dia Art Foundation, Walter de Maria creates “The New York Earth Room”, the third “earth room” sculpture by the artist, in New York, New York (still open to the public at 141 Wooster Street)

Artists Space in New York City mounts the exhibition "Pictures", curated by Douglas Crimp under the direction of Helene Winer; It includes work by Tony Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, and Philip Smith; The exhibition heralds the rise of Post-Modernism

Ree Morton dies

Antonio Calderara dies in Vacciago, Italy

Heinz Borchers dies in Bremen

The Studio Museum in Harlem mounts the first retrospective of Beauford Delaney

Olivier Mosset moves to New York City

Alma Thomas dies in Washington, DC

McKendree Key is born in Brattleboro, Vermont 

Sonia Delaunay dies

Karl Keller dies on October 4 in Weimar

Beauford Delaney dies in Paris, France

Commissioned by the Dia Art Foundation, Walter de Maria creates “The Broken Kilometer”, in New York, New York, (still open to the public at 393 West Broadway)

The exhibition "Constructivism and the Geometric Tradition: Selections from the McCrory Corporation Collection" tours the United States - Buffalo, Dallas, San Francisco, La Jolla, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Detroit and Wisconsin (1979-1981)

The exhibition "Wall Painting" is mounted at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; includes the artists Marcia Hafif, Richard Jackson, Lucio Pozzi, Robert Ryman, and Robert Yasuda