Vera Molnár

Vera Molnár (1924 -), is an artist plastician born with Budapest, Hungary. Lives in France since 1947.

From Budapest to Paris

Véra Gacs is born in Budapest in 1924 and receives a typical education of the middle-class Mitteleuropa. Registered at the school of the Art schools of Budapest, it follows there a solid traditional formation of painting until obtaining in 1947 of its diploma for the occupation of professor of Histoire of art and esthetics. It is during its studies that it meets François Molnár which will become his/her companion of life and creation. Their diploma out of pocket, Molnár decide to leave the Hungary in 1947 to settle with Paris. It is in this city that all their research will be worked out and that will be born from many friendships with most of the artists who reside there. Let us quote shovel-mixes: Georges Vantongerloo, Felix Del Marle, Csaky, Brancusi, Herbin, Michel Seuphor, Vasarely, Soto, Bill, Julio the Park, Hajdu, Béöthy, Hantaï, etc

IN the SEARCH Of a BASE

Encouraged by Sonia Delaunay, emblematic figure of the generation of the pioneers of the abstract art, Véra Molnar consequently affirms strongly its membership of the community of spirit of the artists of the mobility of built art. It binds friendship with Jesus Rafael Soto and, by its intermediary, becomes acquainted with François Morellet. Both share since the beginning of the Fifties the same desire of elementarism, minimalism and systematic geometrization. Both continue with rigor the investigation of possible pictorial starting from a reduced formal vocabulary which leads them to assimilate the experiments of Bauhaus, the movement De Stijl and the Russian constructivists (Rodtchenko) and Polish (Strzeminski) to transmute them into an art of a radical originality. Not very inclined to follow the vogue of the cinetism which occupies holding them of the abstract art at that time under the direction from Vasarely, they establishes the bases and generates the principles of one “minimalism to the Frenchwoman” according to the term introduced by Serge Lemoine. Year after year, will set up the 3 main roads of molnarienne creation:

1) To put the doubt forward at any action and to start again unceasingly, return without truce to the starting point without never regarding as completed, acquired and closed the development of a work.

2) Then, to carry out with rigor, method and systematism any plastic research following the example scientific protocol until most exhaustively formalizing possible all the ramifications of a procedure of serial study.

3) Lastly, to remain in the specific field of optics, visual, of asymbolic, while knowing that the concept of “innocent eye” exists only in one fantasmée form and that no “pure visibility” can be reached and be registered against the fact that opposite an image, the work of the glance of each one is with work and that the individuation of this glance burdens any possibility of claiming to see for another.

Véra Molnar follows the traditional teaching of the School of the fine arts of Budapest and obtains its diploma for the occupation of professor of history of art and esthetics in 1947.

1942-1947 : school of the Art schools of Budapest.

Since 1946, made geometrical abstract painting.

1947 : the diploma for the occupation of professor of history of art and esthetics obtains.

1947 : stock exchange in Rome.

It then leaves Hungary for France in company of her Francois, husband and works with him with the development of works of which they generally divide the signature until 1960, date on which François Molnar definitively gives up any activity of plastics technician to devote itself to the scientific research in the field of visual arts.

1958-1968 : work using the " machine imaginaire".

1960 : Co-founder of the G.R.A.V. (Group of Search for Visual Art).

1960 : first exposure of the group: Konkrete Kunst, organized by max Bill, Zurich, Switzerland.

1967 : Co-founder of the Art group and Data processing, Institute of Esthetics and Sciences of Art, Paris.

1968 : the first work on computer.

1974-1976 : development of the MolnArt program.

1976 : first personal exposure to the Gallery of the Polytechnic school of London.

1979 : work with the Workshop of Research of the Techniques Advanced in the Center Georges Pompidou, Paris.

1980 : member of the C.R.E.I.A.V. (Research center Experimental and Data-processing of Visual Arts), University Paris I Sorbonne.

1985-1990 : part-time lecturer to the U.E.R. Visual arts and with Sciences with Art, University Paris I Sorbonne.

2004 : Als das Quadrat noch ein Quadrat war, Retrospective for the 80e birthday with the Museum Willhem - Hack, Ludwigshafen, Germany

A principle, a method and an objective are at the base of its work. The principle is the doubt: visceral and radical. The method, unceasingly renewed, is that of the interrogation of possible pictorial influenced by the rigor and the systematism of a procedure quasi-scientist. The objective consists in remaining in the specific field of the vision and the perceptive system without seeking to make mean anything with work. Vera Molnar has subjected for more than forty years the line, the quadrilateral or the ovoid one with the compositionnelles laws (the repetition, symmetry-dissymmetry, balance-imbalance) and mathematics (modulor, golden section, continuation of Fibonacci…). From its research were born in the Fifties from works which anticipate and precede the " minimalisme". Towards end of the year 60 comes time when the computer become accessible, will replace via a plotting table the inscription of the hand to open the fields of painting.

It creates combinative and serialized works, from now on carried out starting from computer programs, outcome for purposes of deployed grids.

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