SIGGRAPH regrets to announce the death of Vera Molnár on December 7, 2023.
SIGGRAPH recognized Molnár for her many pioneering computational art techniques engaging human sensitivity in the production of her abstract geometrical artworks with the 2022 ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artists Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art.
The Hungarian-French artist co-founded two groups that focused on the use of technology within the arts: the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, a collaborative artists group in Paris that consisted of eleven opto-kinetic artists, and Art et Informatique, a group dedicated to computer art.
Molnár earned early programming language, including Basic, to make art. Her work has been featured in major international solo and group exhibitions and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Centre Pompidou. In 2018 she received the AWARE Outstanding Merit Award from the French Ministry of Culture acknowledging leading female figures in the world of culture.
A set of Molnár’s computer drawings from the 1970s was exhibited at the prestigious 2022 Venice Biennale of Art, where, at 98, she was the oldest artist participating in the Biennale. She collaborated with Dr. Francesca Franco to create the ICÔNE 2020 glass works now also in an official Venice Biennale collateral exhibition.