Curators Statement

Exhibition. RCM Galerie, Paris, May 2 – June 2

The RCM Galerie is proud to present The Pioneers of Digital Art in the 1960’s-1970’s, a group exhibition of seminal works by the early generation of artists working with computers, and encouraged to publish their work in the manner of scientists in the Leonardo journal, founded in 1968 by Frank Malina.

Presenting works in a variety of media, including painting, photography, sculpture, collage, and computer-generated prints, the exhibition is intended as a small homage to the avant-garde artists who worked with computers. Some artists built their own circuits, others wrote their own programs or collaborated with scientists, but more often they fought for access to a computer. They also wished the artist to become a social actor in his own right, able to interact with scientists. The undeniable interest in manipulating such instruments was undoubtedly to dissociate artistic practice from the manual arts. Drawings were no longer made by hand, but with the computer. Art became fully conceptual and less the romantic expression of a marginal artist. They relied on the thinking of Max Bense and Abraham Moles, who began to apply Norbert Wiener’s cybernetic and information theory to aesthetic problems.

This early generation of artists, many of whom were inspired by the Bauhaus and the principles of mathematics that transcend science and technology, created a rich vocabulary that is only now being recognized as an interesting art movement of the 20th century.

Artists featured include Charles Csuri, Ken Knowlton, Desmond Paul Henry, Joan Truckenbrod, Colette Bangert, Monique Nahas and Hervé Huitric, Jean-Claude Marquette, Gerhard Von Graevenitz, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Jean-François Colonna, Alexandre Vitkine, Kammerer-Luka. The show is part of  the 28th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA20923, taking place in Paris.

On Saturday May 20 Camille Frémontier-Murphy, co-curator of the exhibition gave a talk “At the Sources of an Artistic Mutation Towards Science: the First Years of the Journal Leonardo (1968-1981) as a Forum for the Pioneers of Digital Art” at the Forum des Images in Paris. Also part of the ISEA Symposium, the talk briefly introduced a paper that will be published in the proceedings of the symposium.
https://www.rcmgalerie.com/exhibitions-isea
https://leonardo.info/review/2023/08/pioneers-of-digital-art-in-the-60s-and-70s-at-the-source-of-an-artistic-mutationhttps://leonardo.info/blog/2023/05/01/exhibition-the-pioneers-of-digital-art-in-the-60s-and-70s-at-the-source-of-an

• Camille & Robert Murphy run RCM Galerie, in Paris, France. It exhibits works of art of the 20th and 21st century. https://www.rcmgalerie.com