Victor Vasarely

Victor Vasarely’s work is more relevant today than ever. The visual effects he created by hand in the mid-20th century anticipated the aesthetics of today’s video games and digital art. His bold colors, undulating geometric compositions, and high-contrast black-and-white works are now seen as timeless.

Born in 1906 in Hungary, Vasarely is regarded as a pioneering figure of the Op Art movement, known for his innovative focus on contrasting colors and optical illusions. Trained by László Moholy-Nagy, he was exposed to the works of Kandinsky, Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mondrian, as well as Bauhaus functionalism, which deeply influenced him. In 1930, Vasarely moved to Paris, where he worked successfully as a graphic designer and systematically explored the optical and emotional potential of various graphic techniques. This led to a heightened understanding of geometric form and its ability to convey sensations of space, matter, and energy.

Vasarely developed his own form of geometric abstraction, creating endlessly varied optical patterns with kinetic effects. He believed color and form were inseparable, arranging geometric shapes in fluorescent hues so the eye perceives a flickering movement. He summarized this approach with the words: “Every form is the basis for a color; every color is an attribute of a form.” In this way, natural forms were transformed into purely abstract elements in his paintings.

The auction's lot OL-MA is a striking example of Vasarely’s 1970s work, featuring dual spheres composed of circles and squares in all the colors of the rainbow.