Vera Molnar has been using computers to make art since 1968, when she first came from her native Hungary to live in Paris. In her early computer-based work she experimented with producing series of images in which an initial order is broken up and fractured through successive algorithmic transformations.
The two images from the Interruptions series show different variations, while the two from the The Trapeze Series show two states in a number of images that represent a progressive move towards a state of increasing disorder. The latter, in particular, is an excellent example of an interactive process of positive feedback, as the end result of each of the iterations becomes the starting point for the next, producing ever greater distortion.
Vera Molnar studied at the School of Fine Arts of Budapest and has been living and working in France since 1947. She co-founded the group ’Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel’ (G.RA.V.) in 1960 and also was a co-founder of the group Art et Informatique (Institut d’Esthétique et des Sciences de l’art, Paris) in 1967. As a geometrical painter, she devoted more than fifty years to the exploration of elementary shapes such as the line and the square, often represented in the form of fragments and possibilities, as well as primary colors.
’What I like’, says Vera Molnar, ’is the non-finished part of it, from which everything can happen.’ The purpose of the work—which could be called systematic even ’mechanical’ (Molnar is after all one of the first artists who has used computers in her work)—is to get the unexpected, liberty and inventiveness, to emerge.
Molnar had a major exhibition at the Museum of Ludwigshafen, Germany, in June 2004.
