Victor Vasarely Stele (Double Hexagon) Painted Wood Contemporary Sculpture

Artist: Victor Vasarely
Title: Stele (Double Hexagon)
Medium: Painted Wood Sculpture
Size: 12 1/4" x 8" x 2"
Year: 1982
Signed: Hand signed and numbered
Edition: 36/100
Condition: Very good condition, no flaws
Documentation: Includes a gallery certificate of authenticity

Victor Vasarely is considered the originator and most influential figure of the Op Art movement. Characterized by well-defined colors, lines, shapes, and lack of blending and shading, the objective of Op Art is to fool the eye by creating visual tension. Vasarely pioneered the combination of forms, color, and shading to create the illusion of movement and depth in art.

Known primarily for his geometric abstraction and complicated paintings, Vasarely embraced various optical illusions techniques in his art. More specifically, his artworks create the illusion of movement through nearly identical geometric shapes arranged in differing patterns. Additionally, through a complex and colorful palette, the artist alluded to kinetic energy.

Stele (Double Hexagon) consists of two cubes with a square pattern on top of each other. The repeated hexagonal patterns use color theory and subtle tonal changes to create the illusion of depth. The works appear to extend forward and recede backward. Vasarely uses the color combination of primary and secondary colors, blue-red and purple-orange, to achieve a vibrant color scheme.

Stele (Double Hexagon) includes a gallery certificate of authenticity. The work is hand-signed and numbered. Furthermore, the artwork is in very good condition with no flaws.

About Victor Vasarely

Born on April 9, 1906, in Pecs, Hungary, artist Victor Vasarely initially studied medicine but soon abandoned the field to take up painting at the Podolini-Volkmann Academy in Budapest. There, he studied with Sandor Bortniky, through which Vasarely learned about the functional artistic style taught to students at the Bauhaus art school in Germany. It was one of a variety of styles that would influence Vasarely before he became the patriarch of Op Art, an abstract form of art featuring geometric patterns, bright colors and spatial trickery.

An Emerging Talent Still an emerging artist in 1930, Vasarely traveled to Paris to study optics and color, earning a living in graphic design. In addition to the artists of the Bauhaus, Vasarely admired early Abstract Expressionism. In Paris, he found a patron, Denise Rene, who helped him open up an art gallery in 1945. He exhibited his works of graphic design and painting at the gallery. Vasarely unstintingly joined together his influences—the Bauhaus style and Abstract Expressionism—to reach new levels of geometric precision and foster the Op Art movement in the 1960s. His brilliant works went mainstream in the forms of posters and fabrics.

The ArtRepublic website describes Op Art as Vasarely’s “own geometric form of abstraction, which he varied to create different optical patterns with a kinetic effect. The artist makes a grid in which he arranges geometric forms in brilliant colors in such a way that the eye perceives a fluctuating movement.”

The Function of Art In Vasarely’s obituary, the New York Times reported that Vasarely viewed his work as the link between the Bauhaus and a form of modern design that would spare the public “visual pollution.”

The Times noted, “He thought that art would have to combine with architecture to survive, and in later years made many studies and proposals for urban design. He also devised a computer program for the designing of his art -- as well as a do-it-yourself kit for making Op Art paintings -- and left much of the actual fabrication of his work to assistants.”

According to the paper, Vasarely said, "It is the original idea that is unique, not the object itself".