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The exhibition unveils on this occasion 300 works, objects and documents of the prolific father of optical art. Paintings, sculptures, architectural integrations will follow a chronological and thematic path like the studies of its beginnings and its advertisements.
The Center Pompidou makes us discover all the major stages of the artist’s life, from his formation in the footsteps of the Bauhaus to his latest innovations around the fourth dimension.
This journey back in time goes back to the ‘30s with the installation of the young Hungarian in Paris when he left his medical studies to become a graphic artist in advertising agencies.
Following in the footsteps of the Bauhaus, Vasarely will mix with Pré- vert and Breton during the Second World War and will be fascinated by the works of Klee, Malevich, Kandinsky and Mondrian.
This 24-year-old young man, Calder’s contemporary, dreams of move- ment and the third dimension. His artistic vocabulary plays on shapes and colors, in black and white in the ‘50s and in more and more fluo- rescent colors. From these illusions of quasi-scientific methodological optics was born his parallel universe of Op’art.
The eyes are lost in a world of lines, ovals, squares and ellipses whose hypnotic power increases with the spatial importance of its installations that fill up a spatio-temporal place, from floor to ceiling, in his Vasarely Foundation of Aix-en-Provence.
Mar Caribe, 1950-1956 Huile sur toile, 163 x 130 cm Collection Erling Neby, Oslo Photo Øystein Thorvaldsen © Adagp, Paris, 2018