Spirals leading into each other, colorful cubes, creating new, endless spaces, flat surfaces that appear to be round: this is the quintessence of the works of Vasarely, the master of vibrant forms. Victor Vasarely was born named Vásárhelyi Győző on April 9, 1906 in the city of Pecs. He graduated from high school in 1925. For a short period of time, he pursued his medical studies, but soon he lost his interest in becoming a doctor and turned toward art. First, he studied at the art school of Artur Podolini-Volkmann, and then between 1928 and 1930 at the workshop of painter Sandor Bortnyik. There, he worked on his drawing skills but did not stick to this genre. In addition to his graphics, he later made sculptures and rugs as well. He became familiar with the idea of Bauhaus during the years spent at Bortnyik’s and also got acquainted with his later wife there, Klara Spinner.
In 1930 Vasarely moved to Paris, where he opened his graphic design studio. Even tough, most likely, his financial needs motivated him to open a studio, his technical knowledge developed a lot due to such work. Moreover, he could identify with the idea of profitable graphic design and the slogan ”Art for Everyone” became his motto. In 1953, he said: ”Tomorrow’s art will be everyone’s, or else art will stop being art.” Judging by the success of his design and forms, which are all parts of today’s popular culture, the famous sentence was not just his motto, but through his works, he managed to achieve that goal. The Colorful City Program of Budapest well exemplifies this, as based on Vasarely’s idea, a number of public parks and squares around the city got a new face as it gained some color.
1940 marked the turning point in Vasarely’s art career when he started shifting from applied graphics to artwork. On this journey, the next milestone was 1944. The Denise René Gallery opened in that year and Vasarely was one of the owners and founders of the gallery. This provided a fine opportunity to Vasarely: he could create and host his own exhibitions. The opening exhibit introduced Vasarely’s paintings to the public. Following that, he continuously worked on his style and technique. At the beginning, his works were inspired by natural forms. The years between 1947 and 1952 were marked by his so-called Denfer-phase, which was named after the Denfert-Rochreau metro station in Paris.
Vasarely made the very first piece of his world famous black and white zebras in 1938 and he was into the topic up until 1950. The zebras make probably the most famous part of Vasarely’s career and it was also the zebras that led him to fully discover modern art with his black and white phase between 1951 and 1963. After 1960, he predominantly used basic geographical elements, such as circles, triangles, and squares.
His art was never secluded. His works rather embraced and reflected reality that surrounded him. His visual experiments were the basis of Op-Art, optical art that he developed. He patented some of his geometrical figures and compositions. Vasarely passed away in 1997. There are four museums solely dedicated to his works, three of them are still open to the public: two of them are located in Hungary (Budapest and Pecs) and one is in France (Aix-en-Provence).