Victor Vasarély
French, born Hungary, 1906 - 1997Thez, 20th century
Not on view
Serigraph on paper
Dimensions36 × 30 1/4 in. (91.4 × 76.8 cm)
Image: 25 × 24 3/4 in. (63.5 × 62.9 cm)
Gift of Marion L. Driggett in memory of Carroll W. Driggett, 1998.17
Born in Pecs, Hungary, Victor Vasarely had studied medicine for two years prior to his studying art at the Podolini-Volkmann Academy in Budapest. In 1928, he transferred to the Muhely Academy, often referred to as the Budapest Bauhaus. It was during this period that Vasarely was exposed to the innovative art of Josef Albers, Kasmir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky. Vasarely moved to Paris in 1930 where he worked as a graphic artist, and also began his initial experiments in optical art.
Vaserely progressed through several distinct artistic phases during the course of his career, although each phase gave evidence to his fascination with pattern and design. It was in 1947, while on vacation at Belle-Île-en-Mer, an island off the coast of Brittany that Vasarely was inspired to create purely abstract art. Influenced by the elliptical forms of pebbles and shells that littered the seashore, Vasarely concluded that an "internal geometry" was the underlying structure of the physical world. Thez is an example of the vibrant optical patterns of Vasarely's later geometric constructions, which featured undulating surfaces and gradual color modulations, developed from grids based on squares, hexagons, and octagons.
