Robert Breer

Robert Breer (b.1926) was an American artist and founding member of the American avant-garde. Working at the forefront of experimental animation for over fifty years he was widely regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th century experimental film. The son of an inventor and engineer, Breer's continued experimentation with a range of film and animation techniques was drawn from his deep knowledge of early cinema and cinematographic technologies.

Robert Breer entered film through painting in the early 1950s when he was living in Paris and deeply influenced by Neo-plasticism as defined by Piet Mondrian and Victor Vasarely. He channeled this interest in geometric abstraction into his remarkable first group of films, which explored the role of movement in the understanding of form and space. As an artist he provided an important link between the abstract films of Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Fernand Léger and the lyric and radical traditions of the American avant-garde, from Stan Brakhage and Bruce Baillie to Paul Sharits.

Robert Breer was born in 1926, Detroit, USA. After completing a BA at Stanford University in 1949 he moved to Paris. In 1952, Breer realised his first animated film inspired by early experimentation with making mutoscopes, an early moving picture device, that work on the same principal as a flip book. Later moving back to the US he was awarded the Max Ernst Prize at the Oberhausen Film Festival in 1969. Following a string of awards and fellowships he began teaching filmmaking at the Cooper Union in 1973. His first retrospective was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1980. Subsequent solo presentations include ICA, London 1983, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 1992, Museum of Modern Art, NY, 2000, Walker Art Center, 2000, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, 2001, Musée-Château, Annecy, 2006.