Victor Vasarely (1906-1997)

Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian-French artist credited with having created the Op
Art movement. Vasarelys paintings and sculpture utilized geometrical shapes and
colorful graphics to create illusions of special depth on two-dimensional surfaces.
This abstract method of painting, also known as Kineticism, borrowed from a diverse
range of influences, including Bauhaus principles, Wassily Kandinskys abstraction,
and the Constructivist movement, which had a particularly significant impact on
Vasarelys practice. Born Vsrhelyi Gyozo on April 9, 1906 in Pcs, Hungary, the
artist originally studied medicine, but switched to painting after two years. Vasarely
enrolled in the Hungarian branch of the Bauhaus in Budapest in the late 1920s.
After settling in Paris in 1930, Vasarely worked as a graphic artist and developed his
signature abstract aesthetic.

Considered one of the progenitors of Op Art for his optically complex and illusionistic
paintings, Victor Vasarely spent the course of a long, critically acclaimed career
seeking, and arguing for, an approach to art making that was deeply social. He
placed primary importance on the development of an engaging, accessible visual
language that could be universally understoodthis language, for Vasarely, was
geometric abstraction, more commonly known as Op Art. Through precise
combinations of lines, geometric shapes, colors, and shading, he created eyepopping paintings, full of the illusion of depth, movement, and three-dimensionality.
More than pleasing tricks for the eye, Vasarely insisted, pure form and pure color
can signify the world.

Early Figuration (1935 1949)

Victor Vasarelys early works are essentially figure and nature based, and even
though he would refer this period of time as wrong ways or false routes. Most of
these drawings already contained the rudimentary elements of the optical and hight
structured geomatric themes that would eventually follow up.

Figure 1 Fille-Feur (1932)

Figure 2 "Sauzon" (1947)

Abstraction (1949 1954)

Inspired by the cracks on the titles of the walls of the Denfert-Rochreau metro
station in Paris, by the peculiar way in which glass breaks, and by the seemingly
haphazard manner in which the waves have shaped and organized the pebbles.
These works from the 1940s, early and mid 50s, compose the first coherent and
identifiable set of abstract works by the artist.

Figure 3"Ezinor" (1949)

Figure 4 "Banghor" (1954)

Zebras (1937 1950)

The Victor Vasarely Zebras are so rare, yet so widely reproduced! These beautiful
renditions of the black and white animal are truly the synthesis of the astists
creative journey from figure and nature to his trademark optical abstraction: the
bridge between the classical and the past-modern master.

Figure 5"Zbre" (1944)

Figure 6"Zbres" (1950)

Black & White (1953 1965)

The Black & White period is the groundbreaking, life changing turning point of Victor
Vararelys creative saga, the moment when he Hungarian expatriate defines the
artist we now know by the name of Vasarely. With these works he laid the
foundation of his captivating surface-defying metaphors and developed the basic
shapes.

Figure 7"Hommage Malevitch" (1953)

Figure 8 "Mandres" (1959)

Figure 9"Lux-Noavae" (1962)

Plastic Alphabet (1960 1980)

The creation of the Alphabet Plastique, literally a fine arts programming language,
is probably Victor Vasarelys greatest contribution of the history of art of the 20 th
century. Though these works he established the fundamental units, the unites
plastiques, the A, B, C of his new idiom derived from the basic elements of
geometry, the circle, the triangle, the square and their variantions that would be
matched to many different color scales of twenty hues each: fine arts software
providing infinite possibilities to the creative act.

Figure 10"Orion-K" (1972)

Figure 11"Hyram-Prism" (1980)

Gestalt and Vega (1969 1984)

Adding the spectacular element of three-dimensionality to the Alphabet Plastique
equation, the artist arrived at the impossible volumes that have become
synonymous to the Vasarely name.

Figure 12"Torony-Nagy" (1969)

Figure 13"Gestalt-Tri" (1978)

Figure 14"Vega-Multi" (1976)

Figure 15"Cosmos" (1984)

Bibliography:
http://www.op-art.co.uk/victor-vasarely/
http://www.vasarely-victor.com/
http://artist.christies.com/Victor-Vasarely--49122.aspx
http://www.fondationvasarely.fr/uk/vasarely4.php
http://www.artrepublic.com/biographies/260-victor-vasarely.html
https://www.masterworksfineart.com/artist/victor-vasarely/