Structuur II (Structure II)

Peter Struycken began his career as an artist working within the Concrete Art tradition first put forward by Theo van Doesburg by creating geometric abstract paintings in which form and colour were put through systematic changes. In 1968, he attended courses on electronic music and programming at the Institute for Sonology at the University of Utrecht, spurring him to create his very first computer drawings the following year with help from two physicists. Computerstrukturen (Computer Structures) was a series of eight hand-painted canvases selected from a large sequence of images based on computer-generated visual compositions. Computer Structures investigated the interplay of chance and control within an artist’s creative output process — a theme that he would go on to investigate throughout much of his long career. From the late 1960s onward, Struycken continued to pioneer computer-generated artworks, and was exhibited together with other Concrete Artists utilising computer programming, such as Lambert Meertens and Leo Geurts, at Galerie Riekje Swart in Amsterdam. In the tradition of constructivist art, Struycken’s spatial, light and sound designs walk a fine line between non-figurative fine art and decorative art. Although his oeuvre graces museums and public spaces across the Netherlands, he is perhaps most notably known by the Dutch public for his 1981 portrait of Queen Beatrix, made of digital shifted dots, still displayed on Dutch postage stamps nearly four decades later. In recognition of his exceptional achievements, Struycken was awarded the Dr. A. H. Heineken Prize for Art in 2012.