Who are the pioneers of generative art?

Early generative art was shaped by artists including John Whitney, Vera Molnár, Georg Nees, Herbert W. Franke, and Harold Cohen (who built the AARON program), along with conceptual artists like Sol LeWitt whose rule-based wall drawings share the same generative spirit.

When did generative art begin?

Some of the first exhibitions of computer-generated art took place in 1965, but the deeper idea, making art by following rules rather than drawing by hand, is far older and runs through much of 20th-century conceptual and systems art.

pioneers of generative art

generative art, art made by following rules and letting a system or machine do the drawing, is older than the recent boom suggests. a handful of artists laid the groundwork decades ago. here are a few of them, with links to learn more.

John Whitney 1917–1995

an American animator and a pioneer of computer-driven motion graphics, using machines to generate moving images built from mathematical patterns. more

Vera Molnár 1924–2023

a Hungarian-born French artist and one of the first people to make art with a computer, in the late 1960s. she explored "ordered disorder," small amounts of controlled randomness inside strict geometric systems. more

Georg Nees 1926–2016

a German mathematician and artist whose 1965 Stuttgart exhibition was among the very first shows of computer-generated art. his term "generative computer graphics" gave the field part of its name. more

Herbert W. Franke 1927–2022

an Austrian scientist, writer, and early computer artist who worked at the intersection of art, mathematics, and technology for most of the 20th century. more

Harold Cohen 1928–2016

a British painter who spent decades building AARON, a program that made original drawings and paintings on its own, a landmark in art made by a system rather than a hand. more

Sol LeWitt 1928–2007

an American conceptual artist whose wall drawings were carried out by others from his written instructions. the artwork lived in the rules, not his hand, a purely generative idea without a computer in sight. more

where gaogao fits

gaogao carries the same idea into the browser: art grown from a system rather than drawn by hand. the twist is genetics, you can keep organisms and breed them, so the process itself becomes something you can cultivate over generations.

grow generative art, free →