Victor Vasarely

Vic­tor Vasarely was born on the 9th of April 1906 in Pécs in Hun­gary. He stud­ied in Budapest at the Podolini-Volkmann Acad­emy. He later joined the Sandòr Bort­nyik School for Graphic Design called Mühely. This „work­shop“ taught him the Bauhaus tra­di­tion. From 1929, he exper­i­mented with tex­tural effects, per­spec­tive, as well as shad­ows and light to cre­ate opti­cal illu­sions. He moved to Paris in 1930 where he worked as a com­mer­cial artist, mainly design­ing posters. From 1944 through to 1947, Vasarely exper­i­mented with cubism, futur­ism, expres­sion­ism, sym­bol­ism and sur­re­al­ism. Between 1947 and 1951, Vic­tor Vasarely found his own style of geo­met­ric, abstract art (also called opti­cal art). He worked on the prob­lem of empty and filled spaces on a flat sur­face. 1951 to 1955, he worked on Kinetic images as well as black and white pho­tog­ra­phy. 1955 to 1965, dur­ing this period, Vasarely worked with a restricted palette of colours and shapes and he invented his „Plas­tic alpha­bet“. 1965, Vasarely fur­ther pur­sued exper­i­ments with opti­cal illu­sions which lead to inter­na­tional fame.