Vera Molnár: Modernist Works, 1948-1962

An Online Exhibition, September-December, 2022

shopmakerMODERN is pleased to present an online selection of pre-computer modernist works by the 98-year old pioneer digital artist Vera Molnár.

In his essay Vera Molnár: Imaginable Images, art historian Grant D. Taylor writes, “The trajectory of Vera Molnár’s career intersects so many artistic worlds it is difficult to write a single account of her practice. Her oeuvre will inevitably appear slightly different depending on what intellectual tradition one employs as their viewing lens. For those interested in the post-war generation of European constructivists, she is an astute interpreter of late modernist abstraction. For scholars concerned with the Nouvelle Tendance movement, she developed a strong pedigree in plastic forms and became a co-founder of important French experimental groups, including Groupe de Recherche and Art et Informatique. For historians of computer art she is a towering figure, a pioneer who built her innovative practice upon intuitive modes of digital production. For feminist historians, she carved out a distinguished career in what was then the ultra-masculine world of advanced computing.”

Born in Budapest in 1924, Vera Molnár established a prominent position for herself in the field of Constructivist/Concrete art before venturing into the world of computers. She received traditional training in painting, drawing, art history, and aesthetics at the Budapest College of Fine Arts where she would meet her husband and earliest collaborator, François Molnár. Following the couple’s move in 1947 to Paris, where she still lives today, Vera formed important relationships with her contemporaries, including a friendship with the noted abstract artist Sonia Delaunay. However, it would be the Swiss constructivist and theorist Max Bill, and the leading French abstractionist François Morellet who would help to shape Molnár’s early career. Working alongside such artists as Morellet, Julio Le Parc, and Jésus Rafael Soto, Vera and François Molnár became founding members in 1960 of the Research Group for Visual Art (“Groupe de Rechereche d’art Visuel” or GRAV) which espoused minimal, non-objective image-making, and which later gave rise to the Op-Art and Kinetic Art movements of the following decade. Though François began his career as an artist, his abiding interest in theoretical science would lead to a teaching career in the fields of aesthetics and the phenomenology of perception. Together, however, Vera and François would continue to share an enduring interest in the mathematical foundation of compositional arrangement.

As early at 1968, the computer became a central device in the making of Molnár’s paintings and drawings, allowing her to more comprehensively investigate endless variations in geometric shape and line. Molnár learned the early programing languages of Fortran and Basic, and gained access to a computer at a research lab in Paris where she began to make computer drawings on a plotter based on her own algorithms.

Currently Molnár’s work is featured in the Venice Biennale, 59th International Art Exhibition: The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani through November 27, 2022.

Her work is included in the following public collections: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Kunsthalle Bremen; National Gallery, Budapest; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Laurence Shopmaker has worked with Vera Molnar since 2013 and continues to present exhibitions of her work. Digital and pre-computer works may be viewed by appointment. Please address all inquiries to larryshopmaker@gmail.com.

SELECTED WORKS