b. Udine, Italy, 1939; d. Milan, 2018

Op and Kinetic Artist;
Pioneer of Generative & Interactive Art

As a leading figure in the Optical and Kinetic art movement, Getulio Alviani worked across many mediums and disciplines, including painting, sculpture, construction, industrial design, jewelry, and fashion design. He contributed to art movements including those for Kinetic Art, Programmed Art, and Op Art. Alviani often introduced himself as an “ideatore plastico,” meaning a “visual art inventor,” whose various art forms reshaped and re-interpreted the history of art.

Alviani used linearity, geometry, and colors to create optical kinetic art on metal surfaces. Take his innovative Superficie a testura vibratile (Vibrating Texture Surfaces) for instance, whose signature light lines later made Alviani’s most notable work on the world stage. With precise programming, Alviani’s works show images that change according to the movement of the eyes of the viewers. Perceptual illusions are projected in the human brain, thus creating various hallucinating images, activating viewers’ perception within. For this design, Alviani was praised by posterity as the pioneer of generative and interactive art.

In 1965, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York brought to the world the legendary exhibition -The Responsive Eye, making the 25-year-old artist shine on the global art stage and lifting the curtain on the era of Optical Art. In 2000, Alviani once again presented at MoMA in Open Ends, an exhibition on retrospect spanning over a century, and it was on this occasion that Alviani was elected as one of the most influential contemporary artists for the future.

Alviani presented in the Biennale of Venice four times in 1964, 1984, 1986 and 1993, and also in the Documenta 4 in Kassel in 1968. Having been presented at over 700 exhibitions, Alviani’s works have been collected by more than 50 museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires, and National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome.