Elena Asins (1940-2015) stands as a paragon within the canon of geometric abstraction and her oeuvre as a testament to a life dedicated to the integration of art with the burgeoning digital age from the 1960s through to the twilight of her career. Her pioneering work with computer-generated art, at a time when the digital was still embryonic, demonstrates an unparalleled foresight. Asins utilized the computer not as a mere tool but as an extension of her artistic vision, exploring the rigorous beauty of geometry with an almost monastic devotion. Her creations are the offspring of an algorithmic genesis, yet they pulse with the same meticulous precision and intellectual rigor that Asins herself championed—a precision that belied a deeper, almost metaphysical quest for universal truth through the vehicle of pure form.

In her work, Asins treated seriality and mathematics not just as themes but as foundational principles. Like the sequence of numbers in a mathematical series or the recurring motifs in a piece of music, seriality in her artwork suggests a search for order in the chaos of existence. The use of repetition and variation becomes a meditative practice, a rhythmic mantra that speaks to the patterns underlying reality. The present work from the series Canons, with its title evoking the musical canon, is a visual symphony of such disciplined repetition, where each line and shape plays its part in a larger harmonic structure. The mathematical is poetic, with each calculated stroke and vector resonating with the inherent beauty of logical sequences and ratios, inviting the viewer to contemplate the austere grace of systematic arrangement.

The visual composition of Canons exudes a compelling, rhythmic elegance. Stark black forms interlock and contrast with the white of the paper in a choreographed dance of shapes and lines. The meticulous precision of each element’s placement suggests an almost sacred geometry, where balance and proportion are not mere aesthetic choices but echo the mathematical principles that govern the cosmos. Asins’ ink on paper here is a dialogue between the void and the mark, between presence and absence, where the starkness of the black ink is as much a character as the untouched paper. The artwork, thus, is not a mere aesthetic experience; it is a cerebral journey through the landscape of abstraction, a journey that Asins has charted with the astrolabe of her rigorous methods, inviting us to navigate the constellations of her geometric universe with the same poetic reverence that she bestowed upon each of her creations.