Anonima Group – The forgotten Perceptual Art Collective
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Size Change Drawing – Francis Hewitt [1967]
The Anonima Group are a little known US collective working in the 60’s who were dedicated to producing works investigating the psychology of visual perception. Using the latest scientific research of the time they produced a mass of optical works, often geometric and commonly monochromatic. The works were concerned with patterns of modulation and graphic spatializations of repetitive elements. Transformational processes, incremental scalings and subdivision of planes are a prominent features – which, of course, foreshadow common rule-based techniques in the current crop of generative art.
The fact that the Anonima Group has remained in relative obscurity is of no surprise considering the name of the group and its artistic credo which was anti gallery, against art competitions and offering no excuse for the commercialism of art. They also distanced themselves from the later emerging Op-Art movement – it might be said that to some extent Anonima may have been precursors.
No. 1 — March 10th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
wow, that is an interesting thing to have dug up ! thanks for this, Joost.
No. 2 — March 11th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Heh Joost, Np. Some really interesting peices in there. I’d like to see PDF’s of the real catalogues when they are uploaded. Thanks for dropping by.
No. 3 — March 17th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Nice find!