Victor Vasarely and the Op Art Movement

Victor Vasarely Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian artist who developed a style of art known as “Op Art”. Op Art is an abbreviation for Optical Illusion Art. Vasarely worked as a graphic artist early in his career. Wow! That Mr. Torres is a handsome guy.

Crystals These abstract paintings were inspired by broken pieces of tile and glass. Vasarely was impressed with how glass when broken would shatter in specific and unique ways.

Bella Isle Vasarely would go to the beach and looked at the way the waves crashing on the shore would reorganize the pebbles and shells on the sand.

Bella Isle This idea of the pebbles on the beach served as the basis for these abstract paintings.

Zebras Vasarely painted few of these artworks inspired by the striped animals but they would serve an important role in the way Vasarely would see things.

Zebras Vasarely discovered that the zebra stripes would begin to meld and create optical illusions.

Black and White Vasarely began to explore the idea of creating optical illusions in his paintings.

Black and White Still using the black and whites that he used for his zebra paintings these groundbreaking black and white works helped Vasarely to further develop the idea of abstract illusions.

Vasarely’s Alphabet Vasarely studied geometry and looked at the shapes of the circle, square, and triangle.

Vasarely’s Alphabet These basic shapes served as his alphabet, just like letters when arranged in different orders form words, Vasarely rearranged his shapes in different ways to create new works of art.

Vegas Adding form to the shapes, patterns, spectacular colors, and gradients helped to create an idea of three- dimensionality and fully defined his abstract optical illusion art works.

Gestalt These works are some of Vasarely’s most well- known paintings and illustrate his distinctive style.

Tribute to the Hexagon Vasarely died in Paris, France in 1997.