page_title: Victor Vasarely
section_title: Life and work
hierarchical_section_title: Victor Vasarely / Life and work
caption_attribution_description: English: Supernovae (1959-61) by Victor Vasarely In Tate Modern, London
context_page_description: Victor Vasarely, was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement.
  His work entitled Zebra, created in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op art.
context_section_description: Vasarely was born in Pécs and grew up in Pöstyén (now Piešťany, Slovakia) and Budapest, where, in 1925, he took up medical studies at Eötvös Loránd University. In 1927, he abandoned medicine to learn traditional academic painting at the private Podolini-Volkmann Academy. In 1928/1929, he enrolled at Sándor Bortnyik's private art school called Műhely (lit. "Workshop", in existence until 1938), then widely recognized as Budapest's centre of Bauhaus studies. Cash-strapped, the műhely could not offer all that the Bauhaus offered. Instead it concentrated on applied graphic art and typographical design.
  In 1929, he painted his Blue Study and Green Study. In 1930, he married his fellow student Claire Spinner (1908–1990). Together they had two sons, Andre and Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre was also an artist and used the professional name 'Yvaral'. In Budapest, he worked for a ball-bearings company in accounting and designing advertising posters. Vasarely became a graphic designer and a poster artist during the 1930s combining patterns and organic images with each other.
  Vasarely left Hungary and settled in Paris in 1930. He worked as a graphic artist and as a creative consultant at the advertising agencies Havas, Draeger, and Devambez (1930–1935). His interactions with other artists during this time were limited. He thought of opening an institution modelled after Sándor Bortnyik's műhely and developed some teaching material for it. Having lived mostly in cheap hotels, he settled in 1942/1944 in Saint-Céré in the Lot département. After the Second World War, he opened an atelier in Arcueil, a suburb about 10 kilometres from the centre of Paris (in the Val-de-Marne département of the Île-de-France). In 1961, he finally settled in Annet-sur-Marne (in the Seine-et-Marne département).
  Vasarely eventually went on to produce art and sculpture using optical illusion. Over the next three decades, Vasarely developed his style of geometric abstract art, working in various materials but using a minimal number of forms and colours:
  1929–1944: Early graphics: Vasarely experimented with textural effects, perspective, shadow and light. His early graphic period resulted in works such as Zebras (1937), Chess Board (1935), and Girl-power (1934).
  1944–1947: Les Fausses Routes – On the wrong track: During this period, Vasarely experimented with cubistic, futuristic, expressionistic, symbolistic and surrealistic paintings without developing a unique style. Afterwards, he said he was on the wrong track. He exhibited his works in the gallery of Denise René (1946) and the gallery René Breteau (1947). Writing the introduction to the catalogue, Jacques Prévert placed Vasarely among the surrealists. Prévert creates the term imaginoires (images + noir, black) to describe the paintings. Self Portrait (1941) and The Blind Man (1946) are associated with this period.
  1947–1951: Developing geometric abstract art (optical art): Finally, Vasarely found his own style. The overlapping developments are named after their geographical heritage. Denfert refers to the works influenced by the white tiled walls of the Paris Denfert – Rochereau metro station. Ellipsoid pebbles and shells found during a vacation in 1947 at the Breton coast at Belle Île inspired him to the Belles-Isles works. Since 1948, Vasarely usually spent his summer months in Gordes in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. There, the cubic houses led him to the composition of the group of works labelled Gordes/Cristal. He worked on the problem of empty and filled spaces on a flat surface as well as the stereoscopic view.
  1951–1955: Kinetic images, black-white photographies: From his Gordes works he developed his kinematic images, superimposed acrylic glass panes create dynamic, moving impressions depending on the viewpoint. In the black-white period he combined the frames into a single pane by transposing photographies in two colours. Tribute to Malevitch, a ceramic wall picture of 100 m² (1,100 sq ft) adorns the University of Caracas, Venezuela which he co-designed in 1954 with the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva, is
caption: Supernovae (1959–61) in Tate Modern
exif: {"Image Make": "RICOH", "Image Model": "GR DIGITAL 4", "Image Software": "GR Firmware", "Image ExifOffset": "406", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/25", "EXIF FNumber": "19/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "154", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:01:12 11:12:39", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "6311/1359", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6995/3777", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "11/10", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "19/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "6", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2736", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3648", "EXIF LensModel": "RICOH GR LENS"}