Hungarian, 1924-2023

Themes & Variations #404

On-chain algorithm, NFT, and Ethereum blockchain, 2023
Private collection

Toward the end of her life, Vera Molnár found herself celebrated as the “godmother of generative art” by a new generation of artists working with blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). At the age of 99, she released Themes and Variations, a collection of 500 unique computer-generated works created in collaboration with artist and programmer Martin Grasser. This would be her first and only blockchain-native work. She passed away later that year.

Themes and Variations pays homage to many of Molnár’s long-standing motifs: grids, geometric abstraction, order and disorder, and typographic text. Molnár played with the letters N, F, and T as abstract forms reduced to triangles, rectangles, and squares. She rotated, stretched, and pushed them to the limits of legibility. “All these variations around letters resonate in me like music,” she said. “I immediately think of Goldberg Variations or Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations on a Waltz.”

Artwork series