Vera Molnar was an early pioneer in using computers to create art. She was born in Hungary in 1924, and moved to France in 1947 after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest.
In Paris, Molnar began constructing a series of rules to codify the decisions that she made in creating her artwork. She referred to this process as her "machine imaginaire," and developed the algorithms that she would later use to program her artwork using a computer. She began producing her art with a computer in the early 1960s, and so became one of the first "Algorists."
Molnar's work focused on applying simple rules to geometric figures to make interesting compositions. Using a computer allowed her to reduce the tedium of drawing the same figures over and over, and allowed her to iterate through multiple versions of a design quickly. The resulting pieces explore the relationship between structure and disorder, and reflect an abstract, modernist aesthetic.
