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MOLNÁR, Vera

Painter
(Budapest, 1924)

1942–1947: College of Fine Arts, Budapest. Between 1946 and 1947 Molnár  resided in Rome as a scholarship holder, then with her husband Ferenc Molnár, psychologist, she moved to Paris. Together with Garcia-Rosi Morellet, Francisco Sobrio, Joel Stein, Yvaral, and her husband she founded the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuelt in 1960. In 1967 she was one of the founding members of the Art et Informatique group acting at Institut d'Esthétique et des Sciences. In 1979 she worked at the Atelier de Recherches des Techniques Avancées of the Pompidou Center. Between 1980 and 1990 she was the founder and docent Centre de Recherche Experimental et Informatique des Arts Visuels (Université de Paris I.) of Paris. She became acquainted with the paintings of Paul Cézanne and the aspirations of cubism during her college studies in Budapest. She prepared her first abstract painting in 1946. In 1948, inspired by the etching work of Dürer entitled Melankólis /Melancholy/ she prepared geometrical drawings. Between 1959 and 1968 she worked with the help of the “machine imaginaire”, an apparatus, similar to a computer, which almost substitutes the human mind during the work process. She dealt with the possibilities of computer art from 1968, and between 1974 and 1976 she developed the Molnár program, which was among one of the first computer art programs of its kind. During her college years she produced primarily cubist and abstract paintings, while she was tied closely to the traditions of constructivism up until the end of the 1950’s. Her works based on the boarder of science and art prepared from the 1960’s were based primarily on the mathematics, which transforms the square. The works, which followed one another were very similar, Molnár concentrated on the qualitative change the “fantastic occurrence”. She made use of informatics as a tool, which was able to speed up the artistic creative process, as well as a vehicle, which may assist in the breaking away from the traditional notions of art. Following the defining of the placement of the square and other rectangular forms with the structure of the composition she prepared the possible variations of the given composition which remained within the given “tolerance level” of the image. She reached her completely filled forms from contour drawings, and decided upon the final piece to be placed upon canvas after having printed out all the variations for inspection. In the works prepared by her in the past few years she also made use of a reversed process, where she analyzed the finished image with the computer to inspect further possible variations.
(Translation: Vladimir Végh)