Description: vasarely pencil hand signed lithograph. Victor VasarelyLithographEarly one of issue of 75 colored black, white andbrownSize: 9.5x 14.5 inchesPencil Hand signed by artist Born:April 9, 1906; Pécs, Hungary Died:March 15, 1997; Paris, France Nationality: French, Hungarian ArtMovement: Op Art Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian French artistwhose work is generally seen as aligned with Op-art. His work entitled Zebra,created by Vasarely in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of theearliest examples of Op-art. Vasarely died in Paris in 1997. Victor Vasarely (French/Hungarian, 1906–1997) isknown as the father of the Op Art movement. As a painter, he created intricateabstractions that suggested depth and dimensionality using a variety of opticalillusions, with surfaces seeming to bulge out of the canvas. His works presentcolor, form, and pattern as a single interconnected element—a concept that wascritical to the foundation of the Op Art movement and the focus of his matureworks.Vasarely initially studied medicine at theBudapest University in his early 20s, only to abandon his medical studies toattend to the Muhely Academy, the center of the Bauhaus movement in Budapest.While there, he was profoundly influenced by the work of color theorist andartist Josef Albers, as well as the Constructivist methods promoted by artistssuch as Wassily Kandinsky. While Vasarely’s earlier work was concerned morewith color theory, during the 1950s and 1960s his work became more focused onthe optical potential of the two-dimensional surface. He began to use complexand colorful patterns to actively engage the viewer’s eye, and to convey asense of kinetic energy across the two-dimensional surface.Vasarely’s work was heavily influenced by histime spent at Breton Beach of Belle Isle in France, which also prompted thecreation of his Belle Isle series. These works display an intrinsic concernwith the internal geometry present in the natural world, which was a motif thatVasarely continued to explore extensively throughout his life. After a long andcelebrated career, Vasarely died on March 15, 1997 in Paris at the age of 90. Victor Vasarely provided us with some of the mostdistinctive images and optical effects in 20th-century art. From his days as acommercial graphic designer in 1930s-40s Paris to his final decades developingand marketing what he hoped would become a new universal language for art andarchitectural design, Vasarely steered a unique course, combining virtuosictechnical precision with a scientific awareness of optical and geometricaleffects. He is best known for his grid-like paintings and sculptures of the1960s onwards, which play with the reader's sense of visual form by creatingillusory, flickering effects of depth, perspective, and motion. In making theact of looking one of their primary subjects, these works speak to aquintessentially modern concern with the difference between what we can see andwhat is really there. Vasarely was perhaps the first modern artist to realize that Kinetic Artdid not have to move. Instead, he created an extraordinary series of paintingsand sculptures which used geometrical effects to suggest motion within staticforms. From illusions of oscillation and vibration to Escher-like trickswhereby apparent indentations in the picture-surface suddenly seem to protrudefrom it, Vasarely's pioneering techniques not only influenced the Op Artmovement of the 1960s, but helped to define the whole psychedelic mood of thatdecade. Likehis predecessors in the Constructivist and Concrete Art movements, Vasarelywanted to create a universal visual vocabulary for modern art. By the 1960s, hehad developed what he called an "Alphabet Plastique" of endlesslyinterchangeable compositional elements. These small, square units eachconsisted of a simple combination of figure and ground, whose color and shapecould be changed in any number of ways, to be organized in any conceivablepattern. This aspect of Vasarely's work exemplifies a post-Second World Warconcern with using art to communicate across national and cultural boundaries,by stripping away all topical reference, and using visual effects so simplethat they would mean the same thing to any viewer. In this way, Vasarely soughtto create what he called a "Planetary Folklore". As astudent of Constructivism, Vasarely believed that art should have a functionalpurpose within society, an aim he pursued partly by exploring the overlapsbetween art and architecture. As well as designing murals and other visualfeatures specifically for architectural spaces, Vasarely believed that hisvisual vocabulary of interchangeable compositional elements could be used inurban planning, as a way of combining qualities of regularity and variety withindomestic architecture, street design, and so on. While many artists from the1910s onwards had considered how modern art and architecture might influenceeach other, few pursued that idea with such a singular and consistent vision asVasarely.
Price: 399 USD
Location: Framingham, Massachusetts
End Time: 2024-10-08T12:31:52.000Z
Shipping Cost: 0 USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 14 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Type: Print
Artist: Victor Vasarely
Style: Abstract