Victor Vasarely

VICTOR VASARELY (Pécs, Hungary, 1906 – Paris, 1997).
“Tsillag,” 1986.
Color lithograph on Arches paper, print no. 44/80.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
Measurements: 50 x 45 cm.

“Tsillag” belongs to Victor Vasarely’s mature period, when the artist had fully developed his exploration of perception, geometry, and spatial illusion. The composition is structured around a strict grid modulated by gradations of red, blue, and white, whose progression creates the sensation of volumes advancing and receding from the plane. This optical transformation of a two-dimensional surface into an apparently expansive structure constitutes one of the essential principles of his artistic language.

Victor Vasarely was one of the key figures in 20th-century optical and kinetic art. Trained at the Mühely in Budapest—a school linked to the principles of the Bauhaus—he developed, beginning in the 1950s, a system based on geometric and chromatic units that would culminate in his so-called “Plastic Alphabet.” In 1965, he participated in the historic exhibition *The Responsive Eye* at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which was decisive for the international consolidation of Op Art. His work is extensively represented at MoMA, which holds dozens of the artist’s works, and his legacy is primarily preserved at the Fondation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence, which opened in 1976.