Rolf Aamot

Rolf Aamot (Norway, 1934-2024) was a Norwegian painter who moved between painting, photography, film and television. From the 1950s he was among the pioneers of electronic painting, a practice in which technology is combined with traditional arts such as painting, music, film, theatre and dance. His work is hard to classify: it consists largely of electronic tonal images, includes photographic elements and often takes the form of performance art with abstract photographic elements.

Aamot trained at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, where he studied painting, and later studied film at the Dramatic Institute in Stockholm. His first solo exhibition of paintings took place in 1952 at the Paus Knudsen Gallery in Bergen. From an early age he was taught according to Bauhaus principles by his father, a master carpenter and wood carver. In 1953, while still a student, he received a major public commission for the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo.

His best-known television work is "Evolution" (1966), with music by Arne Nordheim, broadcast on Norwegian television in 1967 and regarded as a milestone in the use of television as an independent means of artistic expression. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s he made many works for television and, in cinema, titles such as "Relieff" and "Actio". From the late 1980s he worked with computer paintings, digital photopaintings and graphic art. His work, shown in Scandinavia, Paris, Berlin, Venice, Moscow and Japan, left a lasting mark on electronic art.