Vera Molnár: An Artist With Algorithms in Her DNA
This second sale devoted to the artist unveils an unprecedented collection of some 180 works, retracing over 40 years of creation and highlighting the legacy left by this pioneer of generative art.
Estimate: €2,000/3,000
After an initial selection of 77 lots was sold on October 21 last year, this second sale, still under the same hammer, brings together 181 works on paper by Vera Molnár created by hand or on the computer: gouaches, paintings and collages from the same legatee, who was close to the artist. A key figure in the contemporary scene and a pioneer of digital art, Vera Molnár moved in 1947 to Paris, where La Gazette visited her in her studio in 2019. She devoted her artistic practice to exploring geometric forms and an algorithmic approach at a time when few artists were yet interested in these tools and techniques. In the 1940s and 1950s, when European art was turning towards lyrical abstraction, Molnár traveled down a more rational and methodical path. Born in Budapest in 1924, she received an academic education at the School of Fine Arts in the Hungarian capital, where she studied art history, with encouragement from an uncle who loved Rembrandt. Early on she turned from academicism to abstraction, inspired by Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich in particular. This quest for structure led her to develop series based on variations, permutations and progressive transformations, laying the foundations for her algorithmic approach.
Estimate: €1,800/€2,500
Geometric Rigor
At her death in December 2023 shortly before her 100th birthday, Vera Molnár left behind a prolific body of work marked by a constant analysis of structures, movement and chance in art. An approach combining scientific rigor and artistic sensitivity paved the way for new forms of visual creation, exploiting the infinite possibilities of computer-assisted art. After the Second World War, despite the fact she was deeply drawn to the Communist ideology then gaining ground in Hungary and Eastern Europe, Vera Molnár — still known as Veronica Gács — left her country in 1947. She spent a period at the Villa Medici in Rome, then left for Paris with a six-day visa in her pocket. She remained in the French capital for good, outraged by the Stalinist purges and the execution in 1949 of the Hungarian leader László Rajk. In Paris, her uncle, the brilliant film set designer Alexandre Trauner, introduced her and her future husband François Molnár to the “Hungarian artists’ table” at the Le Select Café in Boulevard Montparnasse. There she rubbed shoulders with István Beöthy and his wife Anna Steiner, József Csáky and Misztrik de Monda. But the most decisive meeting for the Molnárs was with the young François Morellet in 1957. In 1961, they founded the GRAV (Visual Art Research Group) together, rejecting expressionism in favor of rational and interactive art. 49 Red Squares (€2,000/€3,000) is a perfect illustration of this pioneering work in generative art and the use of algorithms in artistic creation. The drawing was made on a computer using a plotter, which generated geometric forms with mathematical precision. The arrangement of the 49 red squares in an irregular grid, with variations in alignment and spacing, creates a sense of imbalance and movement. Vera Molnár was particularly interested in the tension between mathematical rigor and subtle variations. Here, the slight distortions in the alignment of the squares introduce a kind of controlled chance: a concept central to her work. While this work was based on precise instructions executed by a machine, it left room for human intervention. 49 Red Squares is an emblematic work in Vera Molnár’s production, where calculation and intuition combine to create an aesthetic that is both rigorous and sensitive. It clearly reflects her quest for an imperfect order, where the algorithm became a tool for visual experimentation in its own right.
Estimate: €2,000/€3,000
Controlled Disorder
A brilliant mind with a strong sense of humor, Vera Molnár reminded Arte in 2022 that “geometry does not grow on trees”. This “instrument for bringing order” is a pure creation of the mind, a tool gravitating outside the divine spheres, shaped by and for mankind. But while Molnár’s work was based on mathematical rigor, it also incorporated a playful and poetic side. Unlike the rigorous systems of François Morellet, designed to eliminate all forms of subjectivity by sticking to precise rules, Molnár always sought a tension between order and chaos. Her conception of organized chance led her to introduce a degree of irregularity or randomness into her algorithms, to avoid the mechanical coldness of robotic perfection. Hyper-transformation, a 1974 inkjet print on Benson paper (€3,000/€4,000) from the historical series “Job from Molnár” executed at the beginning of that decade, highlights the disorder produced on concentric squares to which a random percentage is introduced in the program. Her work thus oscillated between control and accident: a pioneering approach in generative art. Chance, a central element in her output, was transformed into a meeting point between human intuition and computer logic, imbuing this rigor with a poetic dimension. Alongside her early computer drawings on Benson paper, the collection up for sale also includes handwriting, grids and lines, studies of profiles of the Sainte-Victoire mountain, collages and torn papers, illustrating her free, experimental approach to form and color. Reproduced on page 27, Sainte-Victoire, fragments (studies), an acrylic painting screen-printed on canvas (€2,000/€3,000) from 2017, is one of the many variations the artist produced from the 1990s onwards featuring the profile of the mountain range near Aix-en-Provence, a series in which she explored the deconstruction and recomposition of the landscape through simple geometric shapes, lines and grids, reducing the mountain to a refined, barely identifiable structure. A variation in the form of collage and torn papers, the 2019 Sainte-Victoire sur Ikea (€1,500/€2,000) uses graph paper with colors evoking the codes associated with the functional design and standardized aesthetic of the Swedish furniture brand. The artistic intervention introduces a unique, chaotic dimension, questioning reproducibility and standardization. Right to the end of her life, Vera Molnár constantly demonstrated, with undiminished verve, that art offers an infinite field for experimentation, and continued until 2023 to use the collage that first appeared in her work in the 1950s. Dated 2018, the diptych 8 Brown Triangles A-B (€1,800/€2,500) expresses this rigorous and experimental approach: the composition is based on a strict geometric organization, with eight brown triangles arranged according to a pattern that seems both orderly and subject to a logic of variation, but also to the imperfections of manual cutting. Through her minimalist yet profoundly expressive compositions, Vera Molnár proved that art and science, far from being opposites, can mutually nourish each other to create a new and timeless aesthetic.
Friday 07 March 2025 – 13:30 (CET) – Live
Salle 9 – Hôtel Drouot – 75009 Paris
Christophe Joron Derem
