Manfred Mohr (born June 8, 1938 in Pforzheim/

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

) is a German artist considered to be a pioneer in the field of

digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various name ...

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

Life and career

Mohr started his career as an action painter and jazz musician. He began using a computer in 1969 because of a growing interest in creating

algorithmic art Algorithmic art or algorithm art is art, mostly visual art, in which the design is generated by an algorithm. Algorithmic artists are sometimes called ''algorists''. Overview Algorithmic art, also known as computer-generated art, is a subset o ...

. He lived in

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in 1962 and in

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between 1963 and 1983. His early computer works 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 The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria). ...

(Golden Nica) at

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in th ...

festival in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital ...

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. He maintained an art studio in

from 1963 to 1983. Mohr attended Kunst + Werkschule in Pforzheim and

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centur ...

in Paris. In 1968 he co-founded the seminar "Art et Informatique" at the

University of Vincennes Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis (french: Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) is a public university in Paris, France. Once part of the historic University of Paris, it is now an autonomous public institution. It is one of the th ...

and in May 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 digital computer. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include Art Basel "Art Features" with bitforms gallery NY in

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (B ...

, DAM Gallery in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

, Mueller-Roth Gallery in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the Sw ...

, Carroll / Fletcher Gallery in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, bitforms gallery in

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, Galerie Charlot in

, the Museum of Kulturspeicher in

Würzburg Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River. Würzburg ...

, and Galerie Wack in

Kaiserslautern Kaiserslautern (; Palatinate German: ''Lautre'') is a city in southwest Germany, located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate at the edge of the Palatinate Forest. The historic centre dates to the 9th century. It is from Paris, from Frankfu ...

. Major retrospectives of his work include ZKM , Media Museum in Karlsruhe in 2013,, the Kunsthalle in Bremen in 2007, Joseph Albers Museum in

Bottrop, Germany 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 cent ...

in 1998, and the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany in 1987. Mohr's work is collected by the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

in Paris, the Joseph Albers Museum, the Ludwig Museum in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, the Museum for Concret Art in

Ingolstadt Ingolstadt (, Austro-Bavarian: ) is an independent city on the Danube in Upper Bavaria with 139,553 inhabitants (as of June 30, 2022). Around half a million people live in the metropolitan area. Ingolstadt is the second largest city in Upper Ba ...

, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Musee d’Art Contemporain and Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, the

Stedelijk Museum The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

in Amsterdam,

Musée de l'Élysée Musée de l'Élysée is a museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, entirely devoted to photography. It is a government-supported institution founded in 1985 by Charles-Henri Favrod. It was housed in an 18th-century mansion until October 2020.

in Switzerland, and many others. Mohr has had numerous solo exhibitions in both museums and galleries in New York,

Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Z ...

, Paris, Amsterdam,

, Berlin,

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, and

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...

. Additionally, he has participated in group exhibitions at the

Leo Castelli Leo Castelli (born Leo Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which ...

Gallery and at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...

in New York. Mohr has received many awards including the 2013 ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art, 2006 (ddaa) Digital Art Award Cologne/Berlin, a fellowship from

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

in 1997, the 1990 Golden Nica from

in Linz, the 1990 Camille Graeser Prize in

, and the 1973 Ljubljana Print Biennial. In 1994, the first comprehensive monograph on his work was published by Waser-Verlag in

.Lieser, Wolf. ''Digital Art''. Langenscheidt: h.f. ullmann. 2009 pp.163-167

Studies, exhibitions, and prizes

* 1957 - Kunst + Werkschule, Pforzheim (gold- and silversmith, painting); jazz musician (tenor-sax, oboe) * 1960 -

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. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical a ...

* 1961 - Received school prize (art) of the City of Pforzheim * 1962 - Began the exclusive use of black and white as a means of visual and aesthetic expression * 1965 - Studied

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris; geometric experiments led 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 digital art in a museum, ARC, Museé d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris / France * 1972 - Sequential computer drawings were introduced; began 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 (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...

* 1977 - Began to work with the 4-D

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, p ...

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 (AAA) 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 fo ...

; received an Artists' Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts * 1998 - Started 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 were visualized on LCD flat panels in a slow, non-repetitive motion. * 2006 - Received the

daa Daa is an administrative ward in the Karatu district of the Arusha Region of Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great ...

Digital Art Award (for digital pioneering- and original geometric research), Köl * 2013 - Received the ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art * 2013 - Honored with retrospective show The Algorithm of Manfred Mohr, 1963-now at ZKM - Media Museum, Karlsruhe * 2013 - Chosen as Featured Artist in a solo show at ArtBasel/Basel with bitforms gallery

Gallery

Manfred Mohr P-306-O.jpg, Piece "P-306-O" (1980/82). Acryl/ Canvas/ Wood/ 4 parts Manfred Mohr P-792 32.jpg, Piece "P-792_32" (2000-2007). Pigment ink on Canvas/ Wood Manfred Mohr P1640 1322.jpg, Piece "P1640_1322" (2014). Pigment ink on Canvas Manfred Mohr P1611 5220.jpg, Piece "P1611_5220" (2012/13). Pigment ink on Canvas

References

External links

Artist's websiteThe ddaa prize winner 2006Winner Prix Ars Electronica 1990 - Golden Nica, computer graphics, Manfred MohrShow at "Truly Virtual Web Art Museum" of Dr. Rodney Chang (Pygoya)Ein radikaler Rationalist - Manfred Mohr im KunstforumKunsthalle Bremen - Manfred Mohr - broken symmetryKunstahalle Bremen Manfred Mohr - broken symmetry - press releaseNew York Foundation of the Arts - Manfred Mohr Artist's Fellowship 1997Die Zeit 1996 - Manfred Mohr ist ein Purist unter den Computerkünstlern by Manfred Dworschak

(complete reference homepage)

List of works held by the Victoria and Albert Museum
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mohr, Manfred German digital artists 1938 births Living people German contemporary artists