Sylvia Roubaud

Sylvia Roubaud was born in 1941 in Munich, Germany. Her formative training in art began with a series of workshops in the late 60s under Emilio Vedova, the prominent Italian Informel painter. In 1967, she enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, where she studied painting and graphic arts under Günter Fruhtrunk, a pioneer of geometric abstraction. She graduated in 1974 with a diploma in painting. After completing her studies, she remained in Munich, where she ran her own gallery for abstract painting from 1974 to 1995. 

Her work finds a balance between free, expressive gestures and careful, controlled forms, influenced by abstract expressionism while emphasizing calmness and thoughtful detail. She works with acrylic paint, ink, collage, and printmaking techniques, often applying materials directly with fingers, scrapers, or layered masking to build complex surfaces and textures. Central themes include light as a physical presence, the dynamic quality of energy, and transformation as an ongoing process within the image. Roubaud’s creative process is strongly influenced by music, particularly composers like Schoenberg and Messiaen. She interprets their complex rhythms, unexpected harmonies, and shifting tones into visual compositions that emphasize contrast and dynamic movement. Between 1971 and 1972, she participated in an experimental computer graphics project at Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), an aerospace company near Munich. As the only professional artist on a team of engineers, programmers, and mathematicians, she worked closely with programmer Gerold Weiss, providing artistic direction and conceptual sketches that were then translated into computer-generated graphics. Weiss developed software to transform Roubaud’s sketches into early computer-generated images. This collaboration produced works like Explosion Geordneter Strukturen I and _II _and Connections of Points by Arc Sequences, exemplifying an early fusion of mathematical precision and abstract visual language in computer art.

Roubaud’s work has been widely exhibited. Her early computer graphics were featured in the Tendencies 5 exhibition in Zagreb in 1973, a landmark event in the history of digital art. She was included in major institutional shows such as Ghosts in the Machine at the New Museum in New York, bit international at ZKM Karlsruhe, and Ex Machina at Kunsthalle Bremen. She has received support from the Bavarian State Ministry for Science, Research and Art, and was awarded the Honorary Prize of the City of Salzburg for printmaking in 1978. Her work is held in numerous public and corporate collections, including the Bavarian State Library, Deutsche Bank, BMW, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. In 2025, her work was included in the exhibition Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 at Kunsthalle Wien. Roubaud lives and works in Munich and Italy, maintaining an active studio practice.