Otto Piene - Light is my medium

"Otto Piene was a German kinetic artist and co-founder of the ZERO avant-garde group. A pioneer of media art, Piene worked with light and motion to produce mesmerizing displays, as seen in his Light Ballet (1961). At the core of his practice was the desire to study technological processes and harness them to create a sense of movement. “Light is my medium," Piene declared. “Previously, paintings and sculptures seemed to glow. Now they do.” Born on April 18, 1928 in Bad Laasphe, Germany, he studied at the Academy of Art in Munich and later during the late 1950s at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where he formed Group Zero with Heinz Mack. Piene went on to become the first fellow of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies in 1968, and in 1972 his work Olympic Rainbow accompanied the closing ceremony of the Munich Olympics. Piene went on to serve as the director of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies from 1974 to 1993. The artist died on July 17, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. Today, his works can be found in numerous museum collections around the world, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris."(artnet)

Gianni Colombo - Art and Technology

Gianni Colombo, Milan 1937-1993 "He is one of the most important artist in Italy in experiencing kinetic and a member of the Arte Programmata moviment.Between ’59 and ’60 he founds the “T Group”, linked to the international movement of “Nouvelle Tendence”. He  held his firt solo show at the Galleria Pater (Milan, 1960).He experiences in different fields of physics which include electrical and magnet devices, industrial neon lights and laser, all to exalt the aesthetic potential of technological rationalism.  In the 1960s he made experimental films, kinetic object and enviroments. He has exhibited on numerous occasions in Italy and abroad."
Through his work Colombo dealt mainly with the perception of space, creating architectural environments and using a variety of supports including mechanical ones.He was awarded the Grand Prize of the Venice Biennale of 1968 with one of its most famous works, elastic space.In 1985 he becomes director of the Brera Academy where he teaches the “structuration of space”. He also takes part in avant-garde scenography (Operstheater of Frankfurt, 1986) and in designing virtual architectures (the “Architetture cacogoniometriche” in 1988, the “Spazi curvi”, 1992).

Belgian kinetic artist Pol Bury

Belgian kinetic artist, painter and film-maker, born in Haine-Saint-Pierre. After studying briefly at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Mons 1938-9, he frequented the circle of Surrealist poets at La Louvière and was influenced by the paintings of Magritte and Tanguy. His own painting largely interrupted from 1940 to 1945. Represented in the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Brussels 1945. Painted geometrical abstract pictures 1949-53 and was associated with the COBRA group 1949-51, but in 1953 started to make 'plans mobiles' of painted shapes which could be pivoted manually on their axis. First principal one-man exhibition at the Galerie Apollo, Brussels, 1953. Gave up painting in 1953 and experimented with various types of kinetic works, introducing motors in 1957 and making the parts move with an almost imperceptible but jerky slowness, and in a random way. Moved to France in 1961 (first Fontenay-aux-Roses, then Saulx-les-Chartreux), and since 1964 has frequently visited the USA. His later works also include cinetizations of photographs and engravings, a few large-scale sculptures such as '25 Tons of Columns' and several films. Lives in Paris.(.tate.org.uk)