via Wikimedia Commons

Horst Bartnig

Horst Bartnig (1936–2025) was the GDR's pioneering computer artist — a theater painter at the Deutsches Theater and Berliner Ensemble who made constructive-serial art from 1964 and, from 1974, computed it: first with physicist Reinhard Koch at the Rossendorf nuclear research institute, then from 1979 with the informatics institute of the East German Academy of Sciences in Adlershof, running his combinatorics on a Soviet BESM-6 mainframe. His variation series counted their way up — 70, 136, 1,044, 3,622 permutations of a stripe — and his signature Unterbrechungen (interruptions) systematically broke vertical stroke fields into rhythm. Born in Militsch, Lower Silesia; died in Berlin in April 2025. The Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlinische Galerie, and Josef Albers Museum hold his work; the Will Grohmann (1993) and Hannah Höch (2001) prizes honored it. I found Bartnig through Wolf Lieser at DAM Gallery in Berlin.

Artist's website (bartnig.com) ↗

2 physical works