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Spring Auction

OTTO BECKMANN* (Wladiwostok 1908 - 1997 Vienna)
Patterned figure, 1937
wood, 34 x 13,5 x 3 cm, hight with base 37cm
dated 37

ESTIMATE °€ 200 - 400
STARTING PRICE °€ 200

Otto Beckmann was an Austrian artist from the 20th century and a pioneer of media and computer art. He grew up in what was then Russia and as a teenager he visited an exhibition by Marc Chagall. He got to know him personally and developed the desire to become an artist as well. The family fled to Austria in 1922, where he studied at the art academy and from 1941 worked as a teacher at the arts and crafts school in Kraków. From 1945 he lived as a freelance artist in Vienna and was a member of the professional association of Austrian artists and the Vienna Secession. In 1966 he founded the ars intermedia - an early collaboration between an artist and scientists from the Technical University in Vienna. He took part in the international computer art symposium in Zagreb in 1969, Peter Weibel called him the pioneer of media and computer art. The artistic work of Otto Beckmann moved in the field of tension between mysticism and algorithm. It included paintings and sculptures, but also new forms of expression such as abstract film and imaginary architecture (1966). His son Oskar Beckmann built a computer specifically for Otto Beckmann's artistic ideas, which was able to generate images and associated tone sequences. The studio computer consisted of several parallel digital state processors, which controlled an analogue arithmetic unit, where the allocation to picture elements and their further processing took place. In this way, virtual 3-D objects were generated, which were then visible on the screen in a perspective view. For the public space he designed mosaics on numerous Viennese residential buildings as well as church gates and windows for sacred buildings by Robert Kramreiter.

PLEASE NOTE:
The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked °), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13%, for photographs 20%, is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium.
The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.

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