A father of computer art, Chuck Csuri recently passed away at the age of 99 just before this auction. Pioneering the field since the 1960s, Csuri was instrumental in the establishment of Ohio State’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, a leading center in the use and integration of emerging arts technologies. Csuri’s work led to a series of advances in the history of computer art and technology as he experimented with everything from plotters to canvas and screen prints, numeric milling machine sculpture, holograms, animation, and recently NFT’s.

Csuri’s work has been showcased at key moment in computer art history, including Jasia Reichardt’s seminal exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity at The Institute for Contemporary Art, London, England in 1968, and the 42nd Biennale de Venezia, Italy in 1986, as well as the Smithsonian in Washington D.C in 1990. Ars Electronica, a major international competition on computers and the arts, awarded Csuri in 1989 and 1990. Csuri’s works are included in many public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Natively Digital 1.3 : Generative Art is thrilled to be able to present a unique instance of one of Csuri’s most important images, the iconic Sine Curve Man. A rare and award-winning piece of computer history, featured in countless texts on the history of digital and generative art, it is the first artist-created figurative computer artwork, and perhaps the first avatar.

Csuri began the work with an original drawing and transformed it using the sine curve function. His abstraction of the face suggests parallels with early Cubist movements and manages, without having the advantage of color, to invoke the emotive qualities of Expressionism. A similar Sine Curve Man is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

A signed silkscreen, verso-printed on plexiglass in midnight blue, the Sine Curve Man with its simple lines and melting, echoing visages continues to eloquently evoke our very first encounters with digital visual technology.