About
Petrus Wandrey – Founder of Digitalism
Early Years and Education
Petrus Wandrey was born in Hamburg in 1939, into a world shaped by destruction and renewal after the war. As a boy, he built simple radios from scraps, driven by curiosity and the desire to reach beyond his immediate surroundings. Technology, imagination, and invention fused early in his life – seeds of an artistic journey that would later unite art and technology in a groundbreaking way.
At the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg (HfbK) he received a classical education in painting, graphics, and sculpture. His first works were rooted in Surrealism, but he soon sensed that this language belonged to the past. A new era was emerging, defined by electronics and computers – and it demanded its own aesthetic.
"SOFTWARE" (1988)
Petrus Wandrey's shirt
“Surrealism is the invention of my generation.
Your task is to find your own language.”
DOLLAR HILL RACER (1975)
Friendship with Salvador Dalí
In the late 1970s, Wandrey met Salvador Dalí in Port Lligat and Figueres. As a gift, he brought his sculpture "Venus’s Wind," a surrealist depiction of Venus equipped with Siemens fans. Dalí was delighted and exhibited it in his museum – yet he also left Wandrey with a decisive message:
Journey to New York
In the late 1970s, Petrus Wandrey traveled to New York City, where the city’s visual pulse left a lasting impression. Times Square’s glowing billboards, digital screens, and the rhythm of mass media revealed to him that the future of imagery would be electronic. Immersed in Pop Art, Minimalism, and the raw energy of the American art scene, he understood that Surrealism belonged to the past. Inspired by New York, Wandrey abandoned surrealism and began forging his own artistic language: Digitalism. America’s capitalism, spectacle, and culture of consumption would remain recurring themes in his work, often treated with biting irony.
ROCK TO NASH (1976) Portrait Klaus Doldinger
Science and Beyond
In the early 1980s, Wandrey introduced Science and Beyond, a body of work that merged scientific vision with artistic imagination. Human figures intertwined with atomic structures, orbits, and circuit-like motifs reflected his fascination with both micro- and macrocosm. These works were not simple illustrations of science, but a philosophical inquiry into humanity’s place within a technological universe. At once cosmic and ironic, they revealed his conviction that technology and capitalism were inseparable forces shaping modern life. Exhibited internationally, Science and Beyond confirmed Wandrey as a pioneer who translated scientific symbols and digital aesthetics into a new artistic language.
Portrait Wernher von Braun (1977)
VENUS LIGHT (1973)
SIENCE AND BEYOND (1978)
New Age (1978)
The famous Dancer
The iconic “Dancer” sculptures exemplify this shift: human figures reduced to digital, square-like forms, rhythmic and fragmented. They became symbols of the body entering the electronic age.
At the same time, Wandrey began incorporating cables, printed circuit boards, and microchips into his works. To him, these components were not only functional but also aesthetically rich, with a structure that was almost floral. He elevated the hidden beauty of machines into the realm of art.
From 1975 to 1995, he built a visual language that was playful, ironic, and technologically visionary.
DANCER 4 (1986)
Maturity and Self-Definition
By the late 1990s Wandrey had matured as an artist. With his work “Self” he declared his personal and artistic identity, sealing his new language.
Yet he never abandoned his critical stance. His works often attacked consumerism, capitalism, and the intertwining of money, technology, and power with biting irony.
SELF (1995) - "A birthday present to myself."
BLACK ANGEL (1993)
Mona Lisa
A recurring motif was the Mona Lisa. For Wandrey, it embodied the ultimate icon of Western art history – and at the same time, a cliché.
By pixelating, distorting, or parodying it, he asked:
"What happens to cultural heritage when it becomes infinitely reproducible in the modern digital age?"
For Wandrey, the Mona Lisa was both a fascination and a critique.
An image constantly renegotiating its aura in the technological world.
Wandrey also ventured beyond traditional art. He designed tables shaped like circuit boards and collaborated with Meissen Porcelain to create pixel-inspired vases. These works extended digitalism into everyday life.
CALL-MADAME (1998)
MEGACHIP-TABLE (1984)
AMPHORA (2001) Meissen Porcelain
Last Chapter and future
Petrus Wandrey passed away in 2012 in Hamburg. What remains is not only an extraordinary body of work, but a philosophy: that great art must always reach beyond its own time, questioning the world of machines, money, and media while affirming the irreducible human core of creativity. His Digitalism anticipated the aesthetics of the digital age long before it arrived, yet it was never about technology alone. It was about the human being within technology, about imagination as a form of resistance, and about irony as a means of truth. Beyond his life, Wandrey’s art continues to challenge and inspire — reminding us that art is not a reflection of the world as it is, but of the world as it could be.