Happy B-day to a pioneer of computer art: Vera Molnar!
We want to wish a very happy birthday to a pioneer computer artist Vera Molnar who turns 98 years young today!
Hommage à Sebastian Bottin, plotter drawing, ink on paper, 8 x 26 cm, 1979 by Vera Molnar
“ I have no regrets. My life is squares, triangles, lines”
Born in Hungary in 1924, Vera Molnar is one of the first women artists to use computers in her practice.
‘After studying at the Budapest Academy, she received her diploma in 1947 in Art History and Aesthetics. Her artwork has always been focused on abstract and geometrical paintings.
In 1960, Molnar co-founded the “Groupe de recherche d’art visuel” , or GRAV. This group was a proponent of stripping the content away from the visual image in their medium in order to focus on seeing and perceiving. They were instrumental in the Op-art and Kinetic Art movements of that decade.
According to Molnar, in her eyes, her work has a hypothetical character. In order to systematically process her research series, she invented a “technology”, which she called “Machine Imaginaire”. She sketched a program, and then, step by step, realized a simple, limited series, which was self-contained.
In 1968 she discovered the power of the computer to allow an artist to step away from “the social thing” in order to get at the real creative vision. She replaced the illusory computer, the invented machine, by the genuine computer. Her initial work involved transformations of geometric objects, such as a square, by rotating, deforming, erasing all or parts of them, or replacing portions with basic elements of other geometric shapes. She would often repeat the geometric primitives while fracturing or breaking them as she transformed them, ultimately outputting them to a plotter.’
(text credits: COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND COMPUTER ANIMATION: A RETROSPECTIVE OVERVIEW, Chapter 9.2).
In 2019 Kate Vass Galerie has exhibited one of her work, as displayed here:
Java von 12 Quadraten, 1974 by Vera Molnàr
Plotterzeichnung, 60 x 42 cm , Unique
The piece was part of the extensive group show Automat und Mensch; The exhibition was, above all, an opportunity to put important work by generative artists spanning the last 70 years into context by showing it in a single location.
Comprehensive catalogues from the exhibition can be found here.
For any works available for sale by Vera Molnar, please inquire at info@katevassgalerie.com