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Digital art pioneer Roman Verostko, 94, dies

Digital art pioneer Roman Verostko, 94, dies

At 94, Verostko passed away at his home in Minneapolis, MN, on June 1, 2024. Verostko’s death has been confirmed by the artist’s nephew, Jeremy Verostko.

by Public Relations | June 03, 2024

LATROBE, PA – It is with deep sadness Saint Vincent College announces the death of digital art pioneer, educator and humanist Roman Verostko, C’55, S’59, H’21. Co-founder of the Algorist Group, Verostko is remembered as a key protagonist in the use of early computers to create works of art.1. Verostko in his New York studio. Photo by Robert Lax, 1960.

In accordance with Verostko’s wishes, a private internment will occur alongside the remains of the artist’s late spouse, Alice Wagstaff Verostko (1919–2009). Details concerning a reception for family and friends at Saint Vincent are forthcoming.

Verostko is preceded in death by his parents, John Frank Verostko and Mary Veronica Balcik, and his siblings, John Eugene Verostko, George Richard Verostko, Bernard Thomas Verostko, William David Verostko, Charles Edward Verostko, Andrew David Verostko and Theresa Dorothy Leshko.

Weeks before the onset of the Great Depression, Joseph Verostko was born in the coal mining town of Tarrs, PA, on September 12, 1929. Demonstrating an early interest in art, Verostko was schooled as an illustrator at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh before pursuing monastic life at Saint Vincent, entering the monastery on his 21st birthday in 1950 and accepting the name of Roman. Motivated by an insatiable curiosity, Verostko would earn degrees from Saint Vincent College and Seminary before his ordination to the priesthood in 1959. A year later, he was sent to New York to pursue advanced study in art history and studio practice at New York University and Columbia University before earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute in 1961. Inspired by members of the New York avant-garde, he developed an experimental practice of creating abstract paintings and drawings comprised of expressive, gestural marks teeming with vitality. Later, he was appointed as the editor of The New Catholic Encyclopedia’s sections on Art and Architecture (McGraw Hill, 1967). Verostko was responsible for articulating visual styles and ideas from cultures ancient through modern to an American Catholic readership.

2. To create unique gestural strokes, Verostko adapted his pen plotter to use calligraphic brushes he had acquired while teaching in China. 1993.

For Verostko, making art and discussing it had always been an extension of his spiritual life—tangible pursuits to experience the ineffable. As a result, many of the inquiries that have been central to his artistic practice originate from the formative years spent he spent at Saint Vincent.

On Aug. 11, 1968, Roman left monastic life and married Alice Wagstaff, a child psychologist and university professor. The two relocated to Minneapolis, where Verostko assumed a post on the humanities faculty at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). While at MCAD, Verostko served in several capacities including academic dean (1975 to 1978), chairperson of Liberal Arts (1988 to 1991) and eventually professor emeritus in 1994.

In 1970, following an introduction to programming language at the Control Data Institute in Minneapolis and a summer at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies in Boston, Verostko encountered the expanding leverage of algorithms executed with computers. Within a decade, he converted his studio into an “electronic scriptorium” with computers and drawing machines known as “pen plotters.” Guided by Verostko’s algorithms, these plotters generated drawings unlike anything he had ever encountered. For him, the computer served as a pathway to new frontiers of form, and he committed his studio entirely to exploring this new frontier. Verostko would come to master the experimental process of writing computer code for creative purposes—a method of making that would occupy his studio practice for decades.

3. Alice Wagstaff and Roman Verostko celebrating the dedication of Verostko’s WIM: The Upsidedown Mural at the Fred Rogers Center, Saint Vincent College. 2006.

Verostko’s travels to China, first in 1982 and again in a teaching capacity in 1985 and 1998, had a remarkable influence on his development as an artist. Through a lecture tour hosted by universities throughout the country, he introduced 20th century Western art to groups of young Chinese artists eager to expand their understanding of different aesthetic traditions.

Perennially interested in semiotics, philosophy and cross-cultural exchange, Verostko’s work exists at the nexus of creativity and technological innovation. He received significant recognition from organizations that have supported the development of digital art, including a 1993 Honorary Mention for the Prix Ars Electronica; a 1994 Golden Plotter first prize (Gladbeck Germany); a Recommendatory Prize from ARTEC’95 in Nagoya, Japan; a 2009 SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement; and induction into the inaugural class of the SIGGRAPH Academy in 2018.

Over the course of his career, Verostko’s work has appeared in over a hundred exhibitions nationally and internationally; most recently in the exhibitions Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and Coder le monde at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. A prolific writer, he authored 22 published articles on subjects ranging from a 1964 paper on abstract liturgical art to his 1988 paper, “Epigenetic Painting: Software As Genotype,” delivered in Utrecht at the First International Symposium on Electronic Art identifying the biological analogues to generative art. His work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Tokyo’s Tama Art University Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and the ZKM: Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Through his pursuit of pure abstraction, electronic media, and systems of logic and language, Verostko’s creative output over the past 70 years remains vast. Saint Vincent proudly boasts the largest collection of the artist’s work in the world, spanning the entirety of his career, ranging from commissioned murals and interactive sculpture to pen-plotted drawings and time-based media projects. Additionally, Saint Vincent is home to the artist’s personal archive – an extensive repository of materials available for scholarship and curatorial projects.

“Roman represents the best of what a liberal arts education offers; the chance to learn and interpret what life can be,” said Father Paul Taylor, O.S.B., Ph.D., president of Saint Vincent College. “Saint Vincent has always been Roman’s home, and his passing represents a profound loss for those who knew him.”

4. Verostko offers remarks at the opening of his retrospective exhibition, Roman Verostko and the Cloud of Unknowing. Photo by Grace Olson, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 2019.

On November 17, 2021, Saint Vincent formally dedicated the Verostko Center for the Arts. Located inside the Dale P. Latimer Library, the expanded 9,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility features four distinct exhibition areas, a video-presentation space, administrative offices and climate-controlled storage for Saint Vincent’s collection of art, rare books and the College’s archive. As part of the Center’s dedication festivities, Saint Vincent conferred upon Verostko an honorary doctorate of humane letters for his indelible impact within the field of generative art. Dedicated to featuring artwork that investigates intersecting academic disciplines, the Center stands as an enduring testament to Verostko’s lifelong work of revealing the existent power when fields of inquiry converge.

“Decades before computational technology would revolutionize global society, Roman recognized the power and promise of algorithmic procedure, inviting us to see the world in its increasing complexity as worthy of our investigation and reverence,” said Andrew Julo, director of the Verostko Center for the Arts and curator of the Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections. “As an artist, an educator and an author, Roman shaped the conversation around art and algorithms. His death represents a tremendous loss for those who continue to be impacted by his extensive work.”

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to the Alice Wagstaff and Roman Verostko Legacy Fund at Saint Vincent College in support of interdisciplinary arts programs on campus.

 

ATTACHMENTS:

  1. Verostko in his New York studio. Photo by Robert Lax, 1960.
  2. To create unique gestural strokes, Verostko adapted his pen plotter to use calligraphic brushes he had acquired while teaching in China. 1993.
  3. Alice Wagstaff and Roman Verostko celebrating the dedication of Verostko’s WIM: The Upsidedown Mural at the Fred Rogers Center, Saint Vincent College. 2006.
  4. Verostko offers remarks at the opening of his retrospective exhibition, Roman Verostko and the Cloud of Unknowing. Photo by Grace Olson, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 2019. 
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