Vera Molnar, born in 1924 in Hungary, is one of the pioneers of computer and algorithmic arts. Molnar studied painting, art history and aesthetics at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest. She produced combinatorial images from as early as 1959. In 1968 she began working with computers and creating algorithmic works based on simple geometric shapes or geometrical themes.Working in Paris since 1947 – alongside artists such as Jesus Rafael Soto, Victor Vasarely, and Francois Morellet – Vera Molnar co-founded the Research Group for Visual Art (Groupe de Recherche d'art Visuel) in 1960, which investigates collaborative approaches to mechanical and kinetic art. In 1967, she was also founding member of Art et Informatique, with a focus on art and computing.
Still active today at the age of 95, her remarkable practice encompasses painting, drawing, collage, computer drawings, photography and installation.
Beginning in 1968, the computer became a central device in creating her paintings and drawings, allowing Molnar to more comprehensively investigate endless variations in geometric shape and line. She learned the early programming languages of Fortran and Basic, and gained access to a computer at a research lab in Paris, where she began to make computer drawings on a plotter. Utilizing the high calculation speed and signal capacity of the computer to arrive at a large number of variables, Molnar nonetheless insists upon the importance of hazard and chance in the final outcome. By injecting small programming "interferences", she can offset predictable outcomes. Her retrospective, (Dis)Order at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich (2015), emphasised the relationship between order and disorder within her concise visual language.
Other notable recent solo exhibitions include:Une Retrospective 1942-2012, Musée des Beaux Arts, Rouen, France, 2012; and Vera Molnar: Monotonie, Symetrie, Surprise, Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany, 2006. Group exhibitions include: Vera Molnar/Julije Knifer, Fondation Salomon, Alex, France, 2004; On Line: Through the Twentieth Century, Museum of Modern Art New York, 2011; Dynamo, curated by Serge Lemoine and Matthieu Poirier, Grand Palais, Paris, France, 2013; A Brief History of Line, Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, 2013; Abstraction/Figuration, Musée des Beaux Arts, Rennes, France, 2014; and Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959-89, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017.

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