Victor Vasarely
"Every form is a base for colour, every colour is the attribute of a form."
Vasarely was a French-Hungarian artist often credited as the grandfather and leader of the Op Art movement. Utilizing geometric shapes and colourful graphics, he created compelling illusions of spatial depth. He used a method of painting borrowed from a range of influences, including Bauhaus design principles, Wassily Kandinsky, and Constructivism. Born in 1906, he briefly studied medicine, which later added to the molecular appearance of his compositions, but after two years he chose to dedicate himself to painting.
By the time Op Art became an international sensation in the mid-1960s, Vasarely had already been perfecting his greatest contribution to the movement for several years. His 'plastic alphabet’ was a system of endlessly interchangeable units made from basic shapes arranged inside one another, applied in a broad spectrum of colours. Using algorithms, they were organised into dazzlingly complex grids to create his ‘Planetary Folklore’ series. Vasarely believed that this new visual language could transcend cultural borders and save the world from ‘visual pollution’.
During his lifetime, Vasarely founded a number of museums dedicated to his work, most notably the Fondation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence, a monumental glass and aluminium structure consisting of sixteen hexagons that he called 'cells'. He was a firm believer in bringing art to as wide an audience as possible, even going so far as to issue "Create your own Vasarely" kits in 1969. One of his designs featured on the cover of David Bowie's album Space Oddity the same year.
