“It would be childish to imagine that if you make a mechanical or light-emitting box, you also belong to the trend named after movement! The artist is the optimistic builder of the city full of light!”
Hungarian-born Victor Vasarely, who completed his life’s work in France, was a key figure in the abstract geometric art that became an international movement known as Kineticism.
The distinctive style of his work exploded into the public consciousness in the mid-1960s as op-art, setting off a hugely popular wave of fashion.
The starting point was Vasarely’s grid-like compositions based on the contrast between black and white. These created the illusion of out-of-plane movement, bulging, or sudden swelling by shifting or bending lines. Vasarely used the absolute contrast between light and dark to create the illusion of pictorial processes in time and space. His optical experiments led him to associate the impression of motion with the plane of his compositions closed on four sides.
He first began to apply his method to his works organized from the stereoscopic view of various layers sliding over each other, and constructed from acrylic sheets or glass.
These “deep kinetic compositions”, first exhibited in 1955, were combined with a real experience of space. By exploiting the physical laws of refraction and reflection he created spatial collages in a continuous state of transformation through the interference of two identical abstract patterns projected on top of each other, brought to life by the movement of the viewer.
The artist’s objects shown here are vehicles for a creative vision of the plastic possibilities of flat surfaces modulated by light.
Hungarian-born Victor Vasarely, who completed his life’s work in France, was a key figure in the abstract geometric art that became an international movement known as Kineticism.
The distinctive style of his work exploded into the public consciousness in the mid-1960s as op-art, setting off a hugely popular wave of fashion.
The starting point was Vasarely’s grid-like compositions based on the contrast between black and white. These created the illusion of out-of-plane movement, bulging, or sudden swelling by shifting or bending lines. Vasarely used the absolute contrast between light and dark to create the illusion of pictorial processes in time and space. His optical experiments led him to associate the impression of motion with the plane of his compositions closed on four sides.
He first began to apply his method to his works organized from the stereoscopic view of various layers sliding over each other, and constructed from acrylic sheets or glass.
These “deep kinetic compositions”, first exhibited in 1955, were combined with a real experience of space. By exploiting the physical laws of refraction and reflection he created spatial collages in a continuous state of transformation through the interference of two identical abstract patterns projected on top of each other, brought to life by the movement of the viewer.
The artist’s objects shown here are vehicles for a creative vision of the plastic possibilities of flat surfaces modulated by light.
Duration (minutes)
0
What is needed
Nothing
What the artists brings
Nothing
