Victor Vasarely Felhoe Hand Painted Wood Sculpture with $15,000 Appraisal

Artist: Victor Vasarely
Title: Felhoe
Medium: Hand Painted Sculpture on Wood
Size: 15.25"h x 15.75"w x 2"d
Year: c. 1989
Inscription: Signed by the artist
Edition: 100
Documentation: Includes Gallery Certificate of Authenticity and Certified appraisal report from FOSS Appraisal Company

Victor Vasarely's hand-painted wood sculptures provide a unique opportunity to acquire an original Vasarely painting for a fraction of the cost of his actual paintings, which typically sell for more than $1000,000. Furthermore, the three-dimensionality of the sculpture heightens the optical illusions that are a signature of the Op Art movement of which Vasarely was a central figure. In many ways, Vasarely's sculptures are more in-line with the artistic contributions and influences of his career.

Known primarily for his geometric abstraction and complicated paintings, Vasarely creates the illusion of movement through nearly identical geometric shapes arranged in differing patterns. More specifically, his artwork creates the illusion of movement through nearly identical geometric shapes arranged in differing patterns.

Vasarely's hand-painted "Felhoe" sculpture features a dual-sided series of cubes, which each side rendered in a different color pallet. This 1989 sculpture is signed by the artist and includes a gallery certificate of authenticity. It also comes with a certified third-party appraisal from FOSS Appraisal Company which lists the market value for this work at $15,000.

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".