Hervé Huitric

Hervé Huitric was a French artist and educator whose work helped shape the early field of computer-generated imagery. Born in Paris in 1945, he studied painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and completed his art training in 1969. He later enrolled in the computer science program at the University of Vincennes, where he earned a master’s degree in 1973 and completed a doctorate in 1980. Alongside his artistic practice, he taught at the University of Paris VIII in the Arts et Technologies de l’Image program.

Huitric was among the founders of the Groupe Art et Informatique de Vincennes, one of the first collectives in France to explore the use of computation in art. In 1970 he met the physicist and artist Monique Nahas at the Centre universitaire de Vincennes, which marked the beginning of a long collaboration. Starting in 1971, they used programming languages such as Algol and Fortran to generate compositions based on calculated distributions of colour and form. Their early works were printed from coded computer outputs and finished by hand, a method they described as _Séries Continues _because each colour kept the same brightness and intensity wherever it appeared. Huitric and Nahas later developed their own software for three-dimensional modelling and produced early CGI animations that showed the expanding possibilities of digital tools.

Huitric exhibited in major venues, among them the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and his work appeared regularly in the SIGGRAPH Art Shows between 1982 and 1990. His art is held in prominent collections such as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the Centre Pompidou. He received awards in computer animation and in research, including an Honorable Mention from Ars Electronica in 1991 and first prizes from Imagina in 1993 and Eurographics in 1994. Huitric passed away in Paris in 2025.