In autumn 2018, the Städel Museum will present a retrospective of the work of the important artist Victor Vasarely (1906-1997). The co-founder and main representative of Op Art connects the art of modernism with that of our present day, the aesthetically enormously productive period between the two world wars with the avant-gardes of post-war modernism. His oeuvre spans more than six decades and integrates a wide variety of styles and influences: Vasarely was a commercial artist, a central figure in post-war French art with Hungarian origins and roots in the Bauhaus of the 1920s. Above all, however, Vasarely stood at the beginning of a development that increasingly blurred the boundaries between free and applied art, between "high and low," panel painting and poster, museum and youth room. The exhibition "Victor Vasarely. In the Labyrinth of Modernism", developed in cooperation with the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, traces the roots and genesis of this centuryœvre on the basis of central images and objects from his major oeuvre. It highlights Victor Vasarely, who is all too readily reduced to his Op Art, which confuses the senses, in his role as one of the central figures of Modernism.
With 120 works spanning more than 60 years and from both European and US collections, the interpenetration and mutual influence of everyday life and art in Vasarely's work, the progressive transition between the aesthetics of Pop and Modernism are made visible. Thus, the exhibition not only allows us to encounter one of Europe's first Pop artists, but moreover, a new history of the Modernist project that permeates the entire 20th century.
Text source and further information about this event: http://www.staedelmuseum.de/de/vasarely
