Victor Vasarely

Hungarian-French　1906 - 1997

Vasarely was trained as an artist in Muhely Academy Budapest in the Bauhaus tradition, he was acknowledged as the leader of the Op Art movement. Op Art Movement was popular in the 1960s whereby artists manipulated the images through the distortion of the shapes, lines, stripes that created optical illusions. Vasarely’s fascination in linear patterning led him to draw figurative and abstract subjects. During the 1930s Vasarely was influenced by Constructivism, and he only used black and white color in his works; by the 40s Vasarely expanded his creations with greater selection of colors and developed his characteristic style of painting animated surfaces of geometric forms. Vasarely’s works are often inspired by the subjects of the nature, in which he learns to deconstruct then re-construct them into another form.

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

1930 Galerie Kovacs Akos, Budapest
1944, 1946, 1949, 1952, 1955 Galerie Denise Rene, Paris
1961 Galerie Der Spiegel, Cologne; Galleria Lornezelil, Milan; Galerie Le Point Cardinal, Paris; Galerei Artek, Helsinki; Hanover Gallery, London
1965 Pace Gallery, New York
1979 "The Optic Art of Vasarely", Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
1987 "Victor Vasarely" Okresne Museum, Prague
1993 "Travelling Retrospective in Japan”, Mitsukoshi Museum, Tokyo

Selected Group Exhibition
1955 “Le movement”, Galerie Denise Rene, Paris
1965 “The Responsive Eye”, Museum of Modern Arts, New York