Screenprint on paper, signed center bottom of Vasarely and numbered lower left 42/100. 1958. Published by Guilde Internationale de la Serigraphie, Basel (blindstamped). Minor signs of use at edges in places, very faint crease in lower left corner, in very good condition. Measures approx 50*70 cm.
Back to offer overview
Biography
Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) – Monastir Hungarian-born Vasarely initially studied classical painting for a year before enrolling in 1928 at the private art academy of Sándor Bortnyik in Budapest, a follower of Bauhaus. The academy, like Bauhaus in Germany, was called workshop (műhely) but was mainly concerned with graphic art and typographic design. In 1930, he settled in Paris where he initially joined an advertising agency. From 1947 we see that Vasarely goes beyond making more applied art and turns to geometric abstract art where he is inspired by Malevich (see also the series of works Hommage à Malévetch from the period1952-58) and Mondrian, he develops his own style. In the 1950s, he creates black-and-white photographs and kinetic sculptures using acrylic glass plates that cause the perspective to change according to the position of the viewer. During this period, kinetic art comes on strong with artists such as Calder, Soto and Tinguely. Their works are exhibited at Denise René gallery under the name Le Mouvement. At the end of the 1950s, he begins to make serial art, turning a single, repetitive image into a series of variations that are worked out by his assistants in his studio; the idea is that art is made by standardized methods and by anonymous creators so that there is no unique work of art (incidentally, the work would not sell if it could not be attributed to Vasarely). In 1965 he created the series Homage to the Hexagon, a series of works that plays with spherical swelling grids to which color variations are added, creating an optical illusion of volume. Vasarely played a decisive role in the development of Op-art in the 1960s. In 1965, along with artists such as Josef Albers and Julio Le Parc, he participated in the exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After this exhibition, we see Op-art gaining influence in many areas including fashion with fabrics with geometric figures and applied design; Vasarely designed a dinner service for Rosenthal (studio-line), for example.
