Computer Artist Manuel Felguerez: A Brief Interview on the Pioneering Origins of Geometry Painting

Abstract

This interview cum memoir of Manuel Felguerez, by the author, describes the development of two projects in the words of the Mexican artist Manuel Felguerez himself. Felguerez speaks of his experience as a Latin American artist, his encounter with digital technology in the united states and the trajectory of art that his work takes during an intense and experimental period of creativity in the seventies. Felguerez’s explorations were embodied in two books, El espacio multiple (Paz 1988) and “The Aesthetic Machine” La máquina estética (Felguerez y Sasson 1983). The project involved the use of computers for the composition of incipient new media paintings, sculptures and engravings. After the project was concluded, the author avoided the use of computers again, and for different reasons. The value of this interview of a pioneering artist in contemporary America lies in the insider’s view of the situation in the art world, the artist’s first-person revealings and confessions and the deep personal life of the artist as an individual.