Father of op art victor vasarely biography

Each week we pay homage to a select “Original Creator”—an iconic artist from days gone by whose work influences and informs today’s creators. These are artists who were innovative and revolutionary in their fields—bold visionaries and radicals, groundbreaking frontiersmen and women who inspired and informed culture as we know it today. This week, on what would be his 106th birthday, the father of op-art: Victor Vasarely.

“The art of tomorrow will be a collective treasure or it will not be art at all.” – Victor Vasarely

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It wasn’t considered “op-art” when painter, sculptor, and innovator Victor Vasarely began creating in the 1930s. In fact, the term wasn’t coined until 1964 by Time magazine, thirty years after the artist began cultivating, shaping, and pioneering a movement that would go on to influence 20th century art in unimaginable ways.

Victor Vasarely was born in Hungary on April 9, 1906, and sp

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The Father of Optical Art: Who Was Victor Vasarely?

Seemingly moving figures, bulging spheres, and vibrating colors are just a few things that characterize Victor Vasarely’s fascinating body of work. Born in 1906 as Győző Vásárhelyi, Vasarely became known as the father of optical art. Op-art was meant to create illusions of movement and distortions to the human eye, evoking a bred range of emotions, from discomfort and confusion to fascination and joy. Let’s explore Vasarely’s career, the illusionary mästare of optical art.

Victor Vasarely’s Beginnings

Despite carrying out most of his artistic career as a Parisian, Vasarely was born in Pécs, Hungary in 1906. Similar to many famous artists from his generation, he started out his early education not in the arts but in something entirely different. He attended the School of medicin at the University of Budapest for two years (1925-27) before enrolling in a local art school, the Poldini-Volkman Academy of Painting.

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Victor Vasarely

Hungarian-French artist

The native form of this personal name is Vásárhelyi Győző. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Victor Vasarely (French:[viktɔʁvazaʁeli]; born Győző Vásárhelyi, Hungarian:[ˈvaːʃaːrhɛjiˈɟøːzøː]; 9 April 1906^[1] – 15 March 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader^[2] of the Op art movement.

His work titled Zebra, created in 1937, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op art.

Life and work

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Vasarely was born in Pécs and grew up in Piešťany (then Pöstény) and Budapest, where, in 1925, he took up medical studies at Eötvös Loránd University. In 1927, he abandoned medicine to learn traditional academic painting at the private Podolini-Volkmann Academy. In 1928/1929, he enrolled at Sándor Bortnyik's private art school called Műhely (lit. "Workshop", in existence until 1938), then widely r