Victor Vasarely

Hallmark Press, Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2004

"I have faith in the advent of a polychrome and multidimensional language technological art that will radiate as the first purely visual language void of any anecdotic or literary references." — Victor Vasarely

Painted in 1982, Untitled is part of Vasarely’s later works. Producing a substantial amount of art throughout his career, he continued to extend his vision of new dematerialized forms in the last two decades of his life. In this work, he explores the aesthetics of the spherical distortions to a polychromatic grid that he had developed in 1968 in the Vega series. The visual language he uses, combining different colors and geometric forms, creates a painting which transcends the traditions of artistic creation of his time. As a result, the algorithmic system generated in Untitled can be considered as a pioneer for the computer-driven imagery artworks that have emerged in the last few years.

Born in Hungary in 1908, Victor Vasarely is widely considered the originator of Op art, a style based on optical illusion. Beginning his career in Paris in 1930 at several advertising agencies to support his work in the graphic arts, he would begin to develop his fully abstract signature style after the success of his first solo show in 1944. Influenced greatly by geometric abstractionists such as Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, Vasarely mastered the use of optical effects and illusion through color and geometric shape. Much of his work has also been in response to modern technological progress, as the artist often based his abstractions on mathematical calculations and scientific theories; he considered his work to have a direct, visually perceptible correlation to energy, space, matter, movement and time.