Elena Asins

Elena Asins (Madrid, Spain, 1940 – Azpirotz, Spain, 2015) was a visual artist, writer, lecturer, and critic. The artist pioneered the convergence between theoretical computer science and the minimal and geometrical tendencies of the 1960s. Asins' artistic research was initially linked to concrete poetry and the experimental circles that emerged in Spain during the final decades of the Francoist dictatorship. Among these groups was the Cooperativa de Producción Artística y Artesana (Cooperative of Art and Crafts), where fine arts converged with poetry, linguistics, music, and architecture. After 1968, the Centro de Cálculo (Computer Center) of the Universidad de Madrid was another important center where Asins came in contact with computer generated art. In subsequent years, the artist extended her artistic and intellectual research at Universität Stuttgart (1970), Columbia University, and the New School for Social Research in New York (1980-1987). The development of Asins’ work was informed by the aesthetic of Max Bense, the linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky, the music of Mozart, Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and mystical texts from the Old and New Testament. For Asins, the work of art is a time-experienced object that reveals the truth or the hidden order of things.