Peter Struycken (born 5 January 1939 in The Hague) is a Dutch artist, and the brother of actor Carel Struycken. The painter, computer artist and sculptor won the 2012 Heineken Prize for Arts from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[1] He was made a Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1984.
Struycken went to the Haagsche Lyceum and studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague from 1957 to 1962. In 1964 he became a teacher at Hogeschool voor de kunsten Arnhem.
In 1969, Peter Struycken was one of the earliest adopters of using computers to generate art and is considered one of the "pioneers" of Dutch digital art.[2]
"Computer Structures (1969), a series of paintings by Peter Struycken, was made by hand according to digital visual compositions. Digital transitions were made from simple to complex and from regular to random visual structures. The computer enabled Struycken to investigate the role of chance in the creative process, whilst also retaining a certain measure of control."[3]
During the late 1970s, he utilized a basic computer program to create a set of sixteen pastel hues. Subsequently, these shades were incorporated into his color scheme for the Kröller-Müller Museum's auditorium.
One of his best publicly-known works is a series of postage stamps from 1981 (until 2010) he designed with typography designer Gerard Unger. The series is based on a photograph of Beatrix of the Netherlands and made up of dots and produced with the use of a computer.[4]
