Ruth Leavitt

Ruth Leavitt was born in 1944, in St. Paul, Minnesota. She studied painting at the University of Minnesota, where she trained under Peter Busa, a key figure in American abstract expressionism known for integrating biomorphic forms with spontaneous mark-making. Through Busa, she absorbed the pedagogical influence of Hans Hofmann, whose emphasis on visual tension and intuitive structure shaped a generation of postwar painters. She earned her degree in painting in 1969. Leavitt’s introduction to computer art came through her first husband, Jay Allen Leavitt, a professor in the university’s Computer Science Department. She began studying Fortran to gain deeper insight into how programs functioned, allowing her to direct collaborators and work effectively across disciplines. Over the following decades, she taught at SUNY Buffalo, UMBC, and the Maryland Institute College of Art.  

Leavitt began using computers in 1967, starting with a light pen and early interactive software to draw on a cathode ray tube. She credited the inspiration for her first major program to a childhood memory of playing with a rubber dollar bill. Frustrated by the rigidity of grid-based systems, she developed a “stretching program” that allowed her to distort, rotate, and deform geometric forms in three dimensions. Her input structures were deliberately hard-edged and constructivist, selected for their clarity and suitability for transformation. She used mathematical operations to manipulate these forms, transforming them into images that carried the asymmetry and expressiveness of abstract painting. Each visual series required a different method of deformation, and she adjusted the system to respond to the needs of the work. Her process centered on variation and distortion as creative tools. She studied Fortran to better understand how programs functioned and to guide collaborators, but did not write code herself. She approached the computer not as a means of simulation but as a way to invent new forms. She described it as “a multifaceted tool which I control,” comparing it to a brush or chisel rather than a mechanical system. Later, she extended the program to include attraction and repulsion and used it to produce animations, bringing her visual system into motion. Because her tools were generative and system-based, she imagined them as instruments for her own use and as frameworks that could be adapted by others. She worked during a period when computer art was still largely unrecognized by the art world, often creating her images at night in the University of Minnesota’s Space Science Laboratories, where artistic work was only permitted outside scientific hours. 

From the 1970s through the 1990s, Leavitt exhibited widely in North America, Europe, and Japan. She held solo exhibitions at the University of Minnesota, Martin Gallery, the Burchfield Art Center, and others, and participated in group shows at venues including the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bronx Museum, and the Everson Museum. Her 1984 exhibition Transformations of Space and Design marked a turning point in her exploration of spatial deformation and computer-assisted relief. Her work is held in public and corporate collections, including the Albright-Knox Gallery, Siemens Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Buffalo AKG Art Museum. In 1976, she edited Artist and Computer, one of the first major publications to document the emerging field, with contributions from artists working at the intersection of code and visual form. Leavitt was among the first women to use the computer as a primary artistic tool. She passed away in 2025.