Victor Vasarely

Vasarely worked as graphic designer in Paris in the 1930s and it was then that he started to systematically explore the optical and emotional range of various graphic techniques. While supporting himself and his young family Vasarely developed his own form of geometric abstraction which he varied endlessly, creating different optical patterns with kinetic effect. His early work 'Zebra' from 1937 is considered to be one of the earliest examples of Op Art.

The painting “Nill”, in this auction, was conceived in 1962. Colour had begun to seep back into his work following the artist's Black-White period (1954-1960). Vasarely had studied the laws of visual perception and gestalt theory in great depth and made use of the scientific insights in his art. The beholder of “Nill” is meant to struggle subconsciously with the relative position of the squares and circles that appear in the painting. The human brain attempts to simplify and organize the elements into some form of a system. When perceiving an object in a field of complexity, our brain interprets it as foreground (figure) or background (ground). The effect is a virtual movement. Figures seem rise up to the foreground, through the visual planes of the painting.

Vasarely’s experiments with perception had its starting point in an early memory of tiles in a Metro station in the 30s. It provided an impulse that Vasarely explored and returned to over his lifetime. 'Nill' was painted in 1987, when the artist was 81 years old, the similar motif 'Linn-3' a few years earlier.