Vera Molnár (born 1924) is a Hungarian media artist living and working in France. Molnar is widely considered to be a pioneer of computer art and generative art, and is also one of the first women to use computers in her art practice.[1]

Vera Molnár
Still image from Encyclopédie audiovisuelle de l'art contemporain, 1996
Born	1924 (age 97–98) Budapest, Hungary
Education	Budapest College of Fine Arts
Known for	Generative art, Op art, computer art
Website	www.veramolnar.com

Born in Hungary, she studied aesthetics and art history at the Budapest College of Fine Arts. In the 1940s and 50s, she created non-representational paintings. By 1959 she was making combinatorial images; in 1968 she would use a computer to create her first algorithmic drawings.

In the 1960s she founded two groups in France concerned with the use of technology within the arts: the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel and Art et Informatique.

Her work has been widely collected by major museums; in 2007 she was named a Chevalier of Arts and Letters in France.

She was selected as one of 213 artists for the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.[2]

Life

Vera Molnár, born 1924 in Hungary, is one of the pioneers of computer and algorithmic arts. Trained as a traditional artist, Molnár studied for a diploma in art history and aesthetics at the Budapest College of Fine Arts. She iterated combinatorial images from as early as 1959.[3] In 1968 she began working with computers, where she began to create algorithmic paintings based on simple geometric shapes and geometrical themes.[4]

Work

Molnár created her first non-representational images in 1946. These were abstract geometrical and systematically determined paintings. In 1947 she received an artists’ fellowship to study in Rome at the Villa Giulia, and shortly after moved to France, where she currently resides.

In the 1960s, Molnár co-founded several artist research groups. The first, in 1960, was Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, which investigate collaborative approaches to mechanical and kinetic art.[5][6] The second was Art et Informatique, with a focus on art and computing.[7] Molnar learned the early programming languages of Fortran and Basic, and gained access to a computer at a research lab in Paris where she began to make computer graphic drawings on a plotter.

Legacy

Molnár was part of the 2010 exhibition "On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition demonstrated the history of drawing lines.[8][9]

A 2015 retrospective exhibition called "Regarding the Infinite | Drawings 1950-1987" was held at Senior & Shopmaker Gallery in New York City.[10][11]

Awards

In 2005 Molnár received the DAM Digital Arts Award for her life’s work,[12] which includes €20,000 prize, and a cataloged exhibition.[13] Vera Molnár’s exhibit, (Un)Ordnung.(Dés)Ordre.[14] at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv shows her early freehand drawings never exhibited before, from her late-1960s to the new installation at Museum Haus Konstruktiv.[15][16]

Molnár was appointed Chevalier of Arts and Letters (2007), and won the outstanding merit award AWARE in 2018.[17][18][19]

Molnár is one of 213 artists announced as part of the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.[2] The theme for the Venice Biennale is to "Challenge the Idea of ‘Men as the Center of the Universe’".[20][21]

Collections

• Frac Lorraine, France[22]
• Museum of Fine Arts Houston[23]
• Museum of Modern Art, New York City[24]
• Museum Ritter, Waldenbuch, Germany[25]
• Morgan Library & Museum[26]
• National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.[27]
• Tate Museum, London[28]
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London[1]

References

External links

• Official website
• Official Artnet page
• Official MoMa page
• Official Getty Page
• Official Artsy page

На других языках

[fr] Vera Molnár