FRIEZE MASTERS 2025

The works on display emphasise continuity across Cohen’s practice — from his early abstract canvases of the 1960s, to his 1990s works such as the Painting Machine series (1995—2000), revealing a lifelong exploration of rules, systems, and perception in the creative process. This trajectory underscores Cohen’s dual legacy as both a painter and a pioneer of computer art, situating his practice within the history of post-war British painting while tracing its role in the emergence of generative art.

Having graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art, Cohen held his first solo exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 1950. By the mid-1960s, he was regarded as one of Britain’s foremost painters, with solo shows at the Whitechapel Gallery and representing Great Britain at the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966. In 1968, at the height of his career as a painter, Cohen relocated to California to take up a teaching post at the University of California, San Diego, where he was first introduced to computing. This marked the beginning of a radical shift in his practice. By 1971, he was working at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), developing the ideas that would lead to the creation of AARON, the autonomous artmaking programme that defined the next four decades of his career.