A pioneer of Generative Art

Week 13's colours are Sky Blue, Bright Orange, Pastel Lime & Graphite Grey

“What if? It’s my whole life. I wake up in the morning and ask myself ‘what if?”. - Vera Molnár

Yesterday was Pencil Day celebrating this humble but powerful drawing and writing tool. Invented by Nicholas Jacques Conte during the Napoleonic War when the French no longer had access to pure English graphite, finely ground graphite was mixed with clay powders and fired to create solid round rods. The hardness of the pencil was controlled by the temperature it was baked at, the process still used today.

Why’s the 30th March Pencil Day? It was on this day in 1858 that Hymen Lipman patented adding an eraser to the end of the wooden pencil. As I was researching artists who used pencils for art I went down a rabbit hole that led me to the discovery of this week’s featured artist, Vera Molnár.

Molnár (1924-2023) was born in Budapest, Hungary and was one of the most influential figures in computer-generated art. Her artistic journey began with traditional studies at the Budapest College of Fine Arts in the 1940s. She moved to Paris in 1947 and her early work was focussed on geometric abstraction, influenced by Constructivism. This was a movement with it’s roots in the Russian Revolution where art was seen as something that had to be built, with the role of the artist akin to that of an engineer.

Even before computers (the first one, ENIAC, was launched in 1945) Molnár referred to her machine imaginaire, a formal approach to creating art through a series of algorithms and rules.

During the 1960s, she founded two art groups in France concerned with the use of art and technology: the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel and Art et Informatique. It was only in the late 1960s that she first gained access to a computer at the Sorbonne.

These expensive behemoths of the time didn’t have screens or keyboards so instructions were entered using punch cards. Molnár learned how to program the computer to reproduce her instructions via a plotter on paper. In doing so, she became one of the first artists using computers to generate visual art, creating algorithms that produced variations of geometric forms.

Molnár's work is characterised by methodical exploration together with controlled randomness, creating works that explored subtle changes in a basic geometric structure. Her series often showed gradual transformations of simple shapes like squares, lines or circles revealing the beauty of the underlying mathematical principles.

Despite working at the fringes of the art world for decades, Molnár gained significant recognition. Major museums including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London hold examples of her work.

“I have no regrets. My life is squares, triangles, lines.” - Vera Molnár

Molnár had a long and interesting life and continued creating art well into her 90s. There are some fantastic articles about her that you can read here, here or here and there’s an interview that you can watch too.

Sketch for “Carres Sur Fond Vert (25B)”, Graphite and coloured pencil on graph paper, Vera Molnár, 1970

I wanted to feature something in pencil for this week’s prompt, and decided to share two drawings by Molnár, one to pick colour from, and the other because of the dynamic M-shape and use of negative space. I’ll use it as shape inspiration to create some pencil sketchbook drawings with, join me and see what you discover in the process.

”M come Malevitch”, Pencil on paper, Vera Molnár, 1967

Colour Combination

The chosen colours this week are Sky Blue, Bright Orange, Pastel Lime & Graphite Grey. Use the colours along with a contrasting dark and neutral light colour if you wish. Create an artwork in any medium or style.

I love seeing what you’ve create. If you’re posting on Instagram, please tag #coloricombo and #estemacleod and join us in the private Facebook group Creative Prompts.

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