Lillian Schwartz, a trailblazing artist who was among the first to use computers in filmmaking, passed away on Saturday at her home in Manhattan at the age of 97. She played a pivotal role in the 1970s in merging the worlds of art, science, and technology, showcasing the immense potential at the intersection of these fields.

Her death was confirmed by her son, Laurens Schwartz.

Ms. Schwartz was an adventurous and experimental artist who initially explored various media, including watercolors, acrylics, and sculpture, often combining these with diverse, unconventional materials.

Her journey with computers began when she was invited to Bell Labs in the late 1960s as an artist in residence. There, she collaborated with colleagues to create some of the earliest films incorporating computer-generated imagery. She utilized photo filters, paint, lasers, and leftover footage from scientific films to enhance her work.

Schwartz’s groundbreaking creations predated the graphical user interfaces that later became common in personal computers. Her first film, the four-minute Pixillation (1970), took two months to complete. She used punch cards with an IBM 7094 mainframe to produce 85 black-and-white frames on magnetic tape. She then transferred this tape to film using a microfilm recorder, adding color filters and elements like hand-drawn sketches and footage of paint pouring onto glass. The final result was projected onto a screen rather than displayed on a computer.

In her book The Computer Artist’s Handbook (1992), co-authored with her son Laurens, Ms. Schwartz reflected on how she pushed the boundaries of early computer technology. “At first, I was pleased when I made the computer work like a brush, ink block, or oil paint,” she wrote. “But as technology evolved, I had to grow alongside it.”

Ms. Schwartz also developed an intriguing theory regarding Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, sparking significant debate. In a 1986 Arts & Antiques article, she claimed her digital analysis suggested that da Vinci had used his own likeness as the model for the famous portrait. By digitally overlapping the artist’s face with the painting, she demonstrated their striking similarity, a concept that became known as the “Mona Leo” theory. This caused a stir, with the New York Times reporting that it became a hot topic of discussion in various social circles.

Her early forays into computer art came at a time when many artists were wary of using the new technology, and scientists questioned its relevance to art. However, through her collaborations, she fostered a mutual respect between the disciplines, demonstrating how they could complement each other.

Kristen Gallerneaux, curator at the Henry Ford Museum, which houses Schwartz’s archives, noted, “There was a time when people tried to keep art, science, and technology in their own separate boxes, but Lillian showed how these fields could be interconnected.”

Born Lillian Feldman in Cincinnati on July 13, 1927, her father, a Russian barber, and her mother, a Liverpool native, had distinctly different accents, something Ms. Schwartz fondly recalled in a 2013 interview with the Computer History Museum. Her brother, an art school student, introduced her to various artistic materials, and she created her early works from scraps of clothing.

To fund her college education, she enrolled in the Cadet Nurse Corps during World War II, studying nursing at the University of Cincinnati. However, she quickly realized nursing wasn’t her calling. “I was a terrible nurse,” she admitted in a 1975 interview with the New York Times. “The only thing I was good at was sketching on casts for kids in the hospital.”

During this time, she met her future husband, James Schwartz, a medical intern. They married in 1946, and in 1949, she and their first son joined him in Japan, where he was stationed postwar. Shortly after arriving, Ms. Schwartz contracted polio, which left her partially paralyzed. Though she eventually regained some mobility, she never fully recovered and later attributed various family health issues to radiation exposure in Japan after the atomic bombings.

After moving to St. Louis, Ms. Schwartz began exploring different art forms, always pushing the boundaries of each medium she worked with. By the mid-1960s, she was creating motorized sculptures and became involved with Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), an organization connecting artists with scientists and engineers. She often incorporated found objects into her work, such as tubing from factories and fish tank motors.

In 1968, her kinetic sculpture “Proxima Centauri” was featured in a groundbreaking exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art titled “The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age.” This led to her introduction to Bell Labs, where she met computer pioneers Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton, marking the start of her long relationship with the lab.

Collaborating with Bell Labs engineers, she worked on several influential films, including Pixillation and U.F.O.s (1971). In 1985, she won a New York Emmy Award for her public service announcement Big MOMA, a computer-generated short promoting the Museum of Modern Art.

Ms. Schwartz’s influence extended beyond art galleries, with her work showcased at prominent institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Cannes Film Festival. However, it wasn’t until 2016 that she had her first solo show in New York at the age of 89. Artforum praised the exhibit, emphasizing the lasting impact of her innovative approach to digital imagery.

She is survived by her sons Laurens and Jeffrey.