Herbert W. Franke — Math Art (1980–1995) — Quantum NFT release at ninety-four

2021

Artists: Herbert W. Franke · Year: 2021 · Medium: NFT editions of historical computer artworks · Substrate: Ethereum-based editions paired with high-resolution scans and provenance documentation of original analog and 1980s digital works · Place: Munich, Germany / Zurich, Switzerland · Institution: Quantum (quantum.art) — primary platform; Kate Vass Galerie (Zurich) — parallel Math Goes Art exhibition and Lissajous OpenSea drop; EXPANDED.ART (Berlin / Los Angeles) — estate representation Through 2021 and into the spring of 2022, in the final months of his life, Franke released NFT editions of his Apple II–era Math Art series and his 1950s oscillograms through the Quantum platform (quantum.art) and, in parallel, with the Zurich gallerist Kate Vass. The Quantum collection, titled Math Art (1980–1995) after the dates of the original Apple II works, comprised a hundred pieces. Kate Vass Galerie ran a parallel physical exhibition, Math Goes Art, and had earlier handled the first Lissajous oscillogram drop on OpenSea. Franke was ninety-four years old. The releases were among the first by a first-generation computer artist still alive to authorize them — Vera Molnár, Manfred Mohr, and Frieder Nake followed in subsequent years, but Franke was earliest and oldest. The drops mattered for two reasons. The first was financial. Franke had never received institutional pricing comparable to his contemporary visual-artist peers; for seventy years his oscillograms, plotter prints, and Apple II works had circulated at academic and small-collector prices. The NFT sales transferred meaningful value to him and to Susanne Päch — his wife and publishing partner — in his final year. The second reason was archival. Each Quantum piece was paired with high-resolution scans of the original work, dating notes, and provenance documentation establishing the chain of authorship from substrate to file. The release functioned as the first systematic public catalogue of work that had previously circulated only as small-edition prints in private hands. Franke died on July 16, 2022, in Egling, at the age of ninety-five. The retrospective attention that arrived in the years following — the 2024 Generative Art Summit at Akademie der Künste Berlin organized in part by his foundation, the EXPANDED.ART estate program, the institutional acquisitions — caught the work he had been making for seven decades, and it caught his estate, but it did not catch him. The Quantum release also closed a circle. Franke had begun in 1954 with oscillograph photographs of cathode-ray traces — an image generated by a system, captured by a photochemical substrate, signed by a hand. He ended in 2022 with the Math Art series, generated on an Apple II in 1982, captured now by a cryptographic substrate, signed by the same hand. Four substrates, seven decades, the same investigation. Lore Kate Vass had been corresponding with Franke since the late 2010s, when she was researching first-generation computer art for her Zurich gallery program. She has said in interviews that Franke approached the NFT releases as he had approached every new substrate — methodically, with notebooks of routines and provenance, as an extension of his lifelong practice rather than as a departure from it. After his death in July 2022, Susanne Päch founded the art meets science – Foundation Herbert W. Franke (August 2022) and continues his archival work as chairperson; the foundation holds his complete papers, prints, code, and original disks. EXPANDED.ART (Berlin and Los Angeles) represents the estate commercially. Sources • Quantum (quantum.art) — Math Art (1980–1995) collection, hundred-piece NFT release, 2021–2022 • Kate Vass Galerie — Math Goes Art exhibition and the Lissajous OpenSea drop, 2021–2022 • EXPANDED.ART — Herbert W. Franke estate representation • art meets science – Foundation Herbert W. Franke — founded by Susanne Päch, August 2022 • Kent, Charlotte — "Herbert W. Franke on Art After the NFT," Right Click Save, June 2022