Otto Beckmann’s oeuvre as a whole is of such great variety that it is difficult to divide it into usual categories of art and into successive periods in time. Rather, there seem to be some interwoven underlying themes in the work, which, like melodies in a fugue, dominate for a time, then fade into the background, only to reappear in transposed form.
Oskar Beckmann in “Otto Beckmann, Zwischen Mystik und Kalkül”, Peter Peer, Peter Weibel (Hg.)
Otto Beckmann’s works can be found in numerous collections, including the Albertina in Vienna, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Kunsthalle Bremen, the ZKM | Karlsruhe, in Austria furthermore in the Federal Ministry for Education, the Museum of Lower Austria, the MUSA Museum Startgalerie Artothek Vienna, the Neue Galerie Graz as well as in several private collections.
Pioneer of computer and media art
Otto Beckmann is one of the pioneers of computer art. In 1966 he founded the working group “ars intermedia“, a cooperation between the artist Otto Beckmann and technicians of the Technical University of Vienna. In accordance with his artistic ideas, his son Oskar Beckmann built a studio computer that went into operation in 1970. The studio computer served Otto Beckmann as an intelligibles tool.
His works move between technology and vision, between magic and mathematics, between irrationality and rationality.
Peter Weibel, in „Otto Beckmann – Zwischen Mystik und Kalkül“, Peter Peer, Peter Weibel (Hg.), 2008
