In the early 1950s, just a few years after she moved to Paris in 1947, Hungarian artist Vera Molnár made a series of abstract compositions based on the repetition of codified geometric shapes. These early works are in step with the artist groups throughout Europe who were exploring how to program and recombine graphic signs. As the only female founding member of GRAV (Group de Recherche d’Art Visuel), from 1961 to 1968 Molnár perfected her geometric language, complementing it with a systematic gesturalism; her Machines imaginaires are the product of pre-established rules that were slavishly followed in every stage of their creation. Molnár programmed her artistic output through algorithms that became truly mechanical only in 1968. Each work in her series Computer Drawings (c. 1970–1975) is different from the others, with segments, dots, and shapes responding only to the set of parameters that had been entered. These drawings stem from the dialogue between human and machine, and by playing with the equilibrium of this strange conversation, Molnár renders the former more adept and the latter more sensitive.
Stefano Mudu
