Manfred Mohr
Encyclopedia
Manfred Mohr is a digital art
Digital art
Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...

 pioneer. He has lived and worked in New York since 1981.

Life & career

Mohr started his career as an action painter
Action painting
Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...

 and jazz musician. He began using the computer in 1969 because of a growing interest in creating algorithmic art
Algorithmic art
Algorithmic art, also known as algorithm art, is art, mostly visual art, of which the design is generated by an algorithm. Algorithmic artists are sometimes called algorists.- Overview :...

. He lived in Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 in 1962 and in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 between 1963 and 1983.

His early computer works
Computer art
Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation...

 are algorithmic and based on his former drawings with a strong attitude on rhythm and repetition. In 1990 he was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica
Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...

 (Golden Nica) at Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...

 festival in Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. He maintained an art studio in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 from 1963 to 1983. Mohr attended Kunst + Werkschule in Pforzheim
Pforzheim
Pforzheim is a town of nearly 119,000 inhabitants in the state of Baden-Württemberg, southwest Germany at the gate to the Black Forest. It is world-famous for its jewelry and watch-making industry. Until 1565 it was the home to the Margraves of Baden. Because of that it gained the nickname...

 and École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...

 in Paris.

In 1968 he co-founded the seminar "Art et Informatique" at Vincennes University
Vincennes University
Vincennes University is a public university in Vincennes, Indiana, in the United States. Founded in 1801 as Jefferson Academy, VU is the oldest public institution of higher learning in Indiana. Since 1889, VU has been a two-year university, although baccalaureate degrees in seven select areas are...

 and in 1971 had a solo exhibit at ARC - Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since then, that exhibition has become known historically as the first solo show in a museum of works entirely calculated and drawn by a computer
Computer art
Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation...

.

Recent solo exhibitions of his work include the Digital Art Museum and The Museum of Concret Art in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, the Museum of Kulturspeicher in Würzburg
Würzburg
Würzburg is a city in the region of Franconia which lies in the northern tip of Bavaria, Germany. Located at the Main River, it is the capital of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. The regional dialect is Franconian....

, and Galerie Wack in Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern is a city in southwest Germany, located in the Bundesland of Rhineland-Palatinate at the edge of the Palatinate forest . The historic centre dates to the 9th century. It is from Paris, from Frankfurt am Main, and from Luxembourg.Kaiserslautern is home to 99,469 people...

. Major retrospectives of his work include the Kunsthalle in Bremen
Kunsthalle Bremen
The Kunsthalle Bremen is an art museum in the Hanseatic City Bremen, Germany.The Kunsthalle was built in 1849 and enlarged in 1902 by architect Eduard Gildemeister....

 in 2007, Joseph Albers Museum in Bottrop, Germany
Bottrop
Bottrop is a city in west central Germany, on the Rhine-Herne Canal, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Located in the Ruhr industrial area, Bottrop adjoins Essen, Oberhausen, Gladbeck and Dorsten. The city had been a coal-mining and rail center and contains factories producing coal-tar derivatives,...

 in 1998, and the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany
Ludwigshafen am Rhein
Ludwigshafen am Rhein is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Ludwigshafen is located on the Rhine opposite Mannheim. Together with Mannheim, Heidelberg and the surrounding region, it forms the Rhine Neckar Area....

 in 1987.

Mohr's work is collected by the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Joseph Albers Museum, the Ludwig Museum
Museum Ludwig
Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from PopArt, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It also features many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein....

 in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, the Museum for Concret Art in Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As at 31 March 2011, Ingolstadt had 125.407 residents...

, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
The Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is a contemporary and modern art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, built and opened in 2005.-Description:The cubic museum building with 5000 m² of display space was designed by Berlin architects Hascher and Jehle...

, Musee d’Art Contemporain
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal is a contemporary art museum in the Place des Arts complex, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The collection includes over 7,000 works of art by more than 1,500 artists , covering contemporary art in Quebec in particular and Canada in general, as well as...

 and Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, the Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...

 in Amsterdam, Musee de L’Elysee in Switzerland, and many others. Mohr has had numerous solo exhibitions in both museums and galleries in New York, Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, Paris, Amsterdam, Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

, Berlin, Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

, and Seoul
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...

. Additionally, he has participated in group exhibitions at the Leo Castelli
Leo Castelli
Leo Castelli was an American art dealer. He was best known to the public as an art dealer whose gallery showcased cutting edge Contemporary art for five decades...

 Gallery and at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 in New York.

Mohr has received many awards including the 2006 (ddaa) Digital Art Award Cologne/Berlin, a fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...

 in 1997, the 1990 Golden Nica
Prix Ars Electronica
The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...

  from Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...

 in Linz, the 1990 Camille Graeser Prize in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, and the 1973 Ljubljana Print Biennial. In 1994, the first comprehensive monograph on his work was published by Waser-Verlag in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

.

Studies, Exhibitions, Prizes

1957 Kunst + Werkschule, Pforzheim (gold- and silversmith, painting)
Jazz musician (tenor-sax, oboe)

1960 Action painting
Action painting
Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...



1961 Received school prize (art) of the City of Pforzheim

1962 Began the exclusive use of black and white as means of visual and aesthetic expression

1965 Studied lithography
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...

 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris
Geometric experiments lead to hard edge painting

1968 First one-man exhibition at the Daniel Templon Gallery, Paris
Systematization of the picture content

1969 Publication of the visual book 'Artificiata I'. First drawings with a computer.

1971 First one-man show of computer generated art in a Museum,
ARC, Museé d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris / France

1972 Sequential computer drawings are introduced
Begins to work on fixed structures: the cube

1973 Received awards at the World Print Competition-73, San Francisco, and the 10th Biennial in Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...



1977 Began to work with the 4-D hypercube
Hypercube
In geometry, a hypercube is an n-dimensional analogue of a square and a cube . It is a closed, compact, convex figure whose 1-skeleton consists of groups of opposite parallel line segments aligned in each of the space's dimensions, perpendicular to each other and of the same length.An...

 and graph-theory

1980 Workphase: Divisibility, dissection of cube

1982 Quasi-organic growth programs on the cube

1987 First retrospective exhibition, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen. Renewed work on the 4-D hypercube. Four-dimensional rotation as generator of signs

1989 Extended work to the 5-D and 6-D hypercube. Rotation as well as projection as generators of signs

1990 Received the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica in Linz and the 'Camille Graeser Prize' in Zürich

1991 Workphase: Laserglyphs, diagonal paths through 6-D hypercube are cut from steel plates with a laser

1994 The first comprehensive monograph on Manfred Mohr was published by Waser-Verlag, Zürich

1997 Was elected a member of the American Abstract Artists
American Abstract Artists
American Abstract Artists was formed in 1936 in New York City, to promote and foster public understanding of abstract art. American Abstract Artists exhibitions, publications, and lectures helped to establish the organization as a major forum for the exchange and discussion of ideas, and for...


Receives an Artists' Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts

1998 Starts to use color (after using black and white for more than three decades) to show the complexity of the work through differentiation

2002 Designed and built small PCs to run his program "space.color"
and since 2004 also the program "subsets".
The resulting images are visualized on LCD flat panels in a slow, non repetitive motion

2006 Received the [ddaa] Digital Art Award (for digital pioneering- and original geometric research), Köln

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK