Victor Vasarely

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Victor Vasarely
Vasarely c. 1930
Born	Győző Vásárhelyi (1906-04-09)9 April 1906 Pécs, Austria-Hungary
Died	15 March 1997(1997-03-15) (aged 90) Paris, France
Nationality	Hungarian French
Education	Műhely
Known for	Painting, sculpture
Notable work	Zebra (c. 1930s)
Movement	Op art
Website	Victor Vasarely website

Victor Vasarely (French: [viktɔʁ vazaʁeli]; born Győző Vásárhelyi, Hungarian: [ˈvaːʃaːrhɛji ˈɟøːzøː]; 9 April 1906^[1] – 15 March 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader^[2] of the Op art movement.

His work titled Zebra, created in 1937, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op art.

Life and work

Vasarely was born in Pécs and grew up in Piešťany (then Pöstény) 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 center 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'. He worked for a ball-bearing company in accounting and designing advertising posters in Budapest. Vasarely became a graphic designer and a poster artist during the 1930s combining patterns and organic images.

Vasarely left Hungary and settled in

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
  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 imaginaries (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
  Soto, Tinguely were exhibited at the Denise René gallery under the title Le Mouvement (the motion). Vasarely published his Yellow Manifest. Building on the research of constructivist and Bauhaus pioneers, he postulated that visual kinetics (plastique cinétique) relied on the perception of the viewer who is considered the sole creator, playing with optical illusions
  .

• 1955–1965: Folklore planétaire, permutations, and serial art: On 2 March 1959, Vasarely patented his method of unités plastiques. Permutations of geometric forms are cut out of a coloured square and rearranged. He worked with a strictly defined palette of colours and forms (three reds, three greens, three blues, two violets, two yellows, black, white, gray; three circles, two squares, two rhomboids, two long rectangles, one triangle, two dissected circles, six ellipses) which he later enlarged and numbered. Out of this plastic alphabet, he started serial art, an endless permutation of forms and colours worked out by his assistants. (The creative process is produced by standardized tools and impersonal actors which questions the uniqueness of a work of art.) In 1963, Vasarely presented his palette to the public under the name of Folklore planetaire.
• 1965–: Hommage à l'hexagone, Vega: The Tribute to the hexagon series consists of endless transformations of indentations and relief adding color variations, creating a perpetual mobile of optical illusion. In 1965 Vasarely was included in the
  The Responsive Eye, created under the direction of William C. Seitz
  . His Vega series plays with spherical swelling grids creating an optical illusion of volume.

serigraphs were taken into space by the cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chrétien on board the French-Soviet spacecraft Salyut 7 and later sold for the benefit of UNESCO

. In 1987, the second Hungarian Vasarely museum was established in Zichy Palace in Budapest with more than 400 works.

He died age 90 in Paris on 15 March 1997.

Legacy

A new Vasarely exhibit was mounted in Paris at Musée en Herbe in 2012.

The original UK cover for David Bowie's second album 'David Bowie' (1969) features Vasarely's work in the background.^[4]

In 2019, a temporary exhibition of Vasarely's work titled Le Partage des Formes was displayed in the

Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.^[5]

Awards

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• 1964: Guggenheim Prize
• 1970: French Chevalier de L'Ordre de la
  Légion d'honneur
• Art Critics Prize, Brussels
• Gold Medal at the Milan Triennial^[specify]

Museums

• 1970–1996: Vasarely Museum in the Saint-Firmin Palace in Gordes, Vaucluse, France (closed in 1996)
• 1976: Fondation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence, France
• 1976: Vasarely Museum, Pécs, Hungary
• 1987: Vasarely Museum, Zichy Palace, Óbuda, Budapest, Hungary

See also

• Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel
• M. C. Escher
• Janos Major

References

Citations

1. ^ Birth registered at county archives of Pécs http://www.bml.hu ref. no. 330/1906
2. ^ Smith, Roberta (18 March 1997). "Victor Vasarely, Op Art Patriarch, Dies at 90". The New York Times.
3. ISSN 0004-3842
   .
4. ^ Clerc, Benoit (2021). David Bowie All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track. Running Press.
5. ^ "Vasarely – Sharing Forms". Centre Pompidou. Retrieved 7 May 2019.

Further reading

• Busch, Julia M. (1974). A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s. The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia.
  ISBN 0-87982-007-1
  .
• Holzhey, Magdalena (2005). Vasarely.
  ISBN 3-8228-3908-6
  .
• Morgan, Robert C. (2004). Vasarely. New York: George Braziller.
• Popper, Frank (1968). Origins and Development of Kinetic Art. Studio Vista and New York Graphic Society.
• ISBN 0-8109-0532-9
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Victor Vasarely.

• Association Vasarely
• Vasarely: Images, Exhibits, Descriptions, Biography
• Victor Vasarely profile and video documentary at the Central European Art Database
• Vasarely Museum, Zichy Palace, Budapest
• Online petition to save Museum Fondation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence, France (Archived on 16 Apr 2009)
• Fondation Vasarely 3D Project
• Victor Vasarely
• Tate Victor Vasarely