Victor Vasarely can be rediscovered today as one of the central artistic figures of the 20th century, whose pictorial language has taken root in the collective memory without having been given an exact art-historical location. His artistic roots lie in his engagement with early modernism. He was influenced by the theories of the Bauhaus and Suprematism. Later, it is his technoid and psychedelically colorful works that push into space through optical effects and aim to deceive perception. These works are representative of a society in the ascendancy of the future. They shape the appearance of modernism in the 1960s and 1970s and are as much a part of the artistic avant-garde as they are of popular culture. Vasarely was omnipresent through the dissemination of his work in the form of multiples and editioned works. The popularity he sought in the sense of democratizing art also made it a mass product - in the best and worst sense. When his labyrinthine compositions, the colorful illusionisms, the abysses of his early works and the ostensibly colorful Op Art paintings are read in the context of the times, both in terms of painting and content, his art becomes a fascinating testimony to the century-long project of modernism - in all its contradictoriness.
Source and further information:
