During the 1960s artists began creating simple sculptures made from industrial materials like sheet metal, plywood and bricks. In order to distance themselves from traditional sculpture, minimalist artists would describe these artworks in very literal ways, calling them ‘specific objects’ or ‘modules’.

The term modular is closely associated with the artist Sol LeWitt who, in 1965, began working on a series of open and closed cubes, like building blocks, which could be ordered and inter-locked in various different combinations in accordance with a pre-determined system.