Peter Struycken

Peter Struycken was born in The Hague in 1939, where he continues to live. He studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague from 1956 to 1961. In 1964, at the age of twenty-five, he began teaching at the Art Academy in Arnhem, where he founded the Monumental New Style department. The program emphasized the integration of visual arts into architecture, urban planning, and public space. In the late 1960s, Struycken was the first Dutch visual artist to use computers in his artistic practice. He continued to teach in Arnhem until 1976, laying the foundation for what would later be called environmental design.

His work is based on programmed systems and algorithmic variation. Since 1977, he has been using logic and code to generate series in which round or square dots of equal size gradually evolve in color in an unlimited two- or three-dimensional color space and unlimited time. When using fewer than 256 colors, he mixes them by eye in light or paint prior to use. The relationships between colors in hue, saturation, and lightness that must meet visual criteria for certain intervals and differences cannot be calculated using an algorithm. Above 256 colors, he does determine colors using algorithms because the ratios between the colors can no longer be followed visually and other color effects take precedence. Although the color transformations are determined by structure, the results often have a sensory richness. Early drawings were based on calculations written in Algol 60 by physicist Stan Tempelaars. Later works such as Plons and Vloei used limited color space models to generate continuous transformation across a grid. His interest lies in changing color relationships in space and time. A static work is always a snapshot of a dynamic three-dimensional space at a chosen moment in time.

His light installations use computer-controlled changes without repetition to create perceptual shifts in architectural spaces, including a 220-meter-long RGB light arcade under the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and, in 1983, the computer-controlled lighting for the Muziektheater in Amsterdam. Other important public works include Blue Waves, a 3-hectare paved and undulating car park in Arnhem, and a three-dimensional color structure with 5,200 colored spheres for the Aegon headquarters in The Hague. He designed theater lighting for dance performances. His Beatrix Queen's Seal, which he designed in 1980, was used for thirty years in 54 denominations.

In addition to his algorithmic work, he is interested in the visual properties of color, which he captures in paintings. He has said that color is never stable, but constantly changes in its visual effect depending on light, scale, and context. He is also working on a thesis on the conceptual history of the use of color in visual art since classical Greece. His work has been exhibited at the Groninger Museum, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Centraal Museum Utrecht, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, the Kröller Müller Museum, the Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, the Gorcums Museum, and Museum Kasteel Wijlre. His work is included in all the collections of the major museums in the Netherlands and in the Digital Canon of the Netherlands. In 1966, he received the Sikkens Prize for his theoretical and visual research into the structure of form and color. In 1984, he was appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau; in 2008, he received the Royal Medal of Honor for Arts and Sciences; and in 2012, he received the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for the Arts for fifty years of methodical and visually impressive work.