Victor Vasarely
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Victor Vasarely
Born
Vásárhelyi Győző
9 April 1906
Pécs, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
Died
15 March 1997 (aged 90)
Paris, France
Nationality
Hungarian-French
Education
Mühely
Known for
painting
Movement
Op art
Website
www.vasarely.com
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Victor Vasarely (French: [viktɔʁ vazaʁəli]; Hungarian: [ˈviktor ˈvɒzɒrɛlːi]; born Vásárhelyi
Győző [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 short-lived 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.
Contents
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1Life and work
2Awards
3Museums
4References
5External links
Life and work[edit]
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,
theműhely 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 andJean-Pierre. 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.
Outdoor Vasarely artwork at the church of Pálos in Pécs
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 modeled
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 kilometers from the centre of Paris (in
theVal-de-Marne département of the Île-de-France). In 1961, he finally settled in Annet-sur-Marne (in
the Seine-et-Marnedépartement).
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:
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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 andsurrealistic 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.
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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 inGordes 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.
Tribute to Malevitch (1954), Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas
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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 adorns the University of Caracas, Venezuela which he co-designed in 1954 with the
architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva, is a major work of this period. Kinetic art flourished and works
by Vasarely, Calder, Duchamp, Man Ray, Soto, Tinguely were exhibited at theDenise
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 thisplastic 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 Museum of Modern Art exhibition 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. In October 1967, designer Will
Burtin invited Vasarely to make a presentation to Burtin's Vision ’67 conference, held at New
York University.
On 5 June 1970, Vasarely opened his first dedicated museum with over 500 works in a renaissance
palace in Gordes (closed in 1996). A second major undertaking was the Foundation Vasarely in Aix-
en-Provence, a museum housed in a distinct structure specially designed by Vasarely. It was
inaugurated in 1976 by French president Georges Pompidou. Sadly the museum is now in a state of
disrepair, several of the pieces on display have been damaged by water leaking from the ceiling.
Also, in 1976 his large kinematic object Georges Pompidou was installed in the Centre Pompidou in
Paris and the Vasarely Museum located at his birthplace in Pécs, Hungary, was established with a
large donation of works by Vasarely. In the same decade, he took a stab at industrial design with a
500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Vasarely decorated for the
German Rosenthal porcelain maker's Studio Linie.[3] In 1982 154 specially createdserigraphs 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.
A new Vasarely exhibit was mounted in Paris at Musee en Herbe in 2012.
Awards[edit]
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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 Triennale
Museum Fondation Vasarely inAix-en-Provence
Museums[edit]
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1970-1996: Vasarely Museum in Gordes Palace, Vaucluse, France (closed)
1976: Fondation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence, France
1976: Vasarely Museum, Pécs, Hungary
1987: Vasarely Museum, Zichy Palace, Óbuda, Budapest, Hungary
References[edit]
1.
2.
3.
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Jump up^ Birth registered at county archives of Pécs http://www.bml.hu ref. no. 330/1906
Jump up^ The New York Times obituary http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/18/arts/victor-vasarely-opart-patriarch-dies-at-90.html
Jump up^ [Anon.] (1976). "Faenza-Goldmedaille für SUOMI". Artis 29: 8. ISSN 0004-3842.
Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s (The Art Alliance Press:
Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974)ISBN 0-87982-007-1
Holzhey, Magdalena, Vasarely (Taschen: 2005) ISBN 3-8228-3908-6
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Robert C. Morgan, "Vasarely". New York: George Braziller, 2004
Frank Popper, Origins and Development of Kinetic Art, Studio Vista and New York Graphic
Society, 1968
Werner Spies, Victor Vasarely, H. N. Abrams, 1971 ISBN 0-8109-0532-9