Door

Hungarian painter Victor Vasarely is considered one of the founders of optical abstraction, or Op Art. He recalls his formative years as a time when he “came to realize that pure form and pure color can suggest the world.” For Vasarely, abstraction was the ultimate, non-representational language through which to represent reality. After completing his studies at the Mühely Academy in Budapest, Vasarely moved to Paris and worked as a designer for advertisement agencies. He soon became a leading figure in the development of Op Art, a movement that flourished in the 1960s and used optical illusions to create dazzling visual effects. "Door" is a classic example of Vasarely’s concept of “plastic unity,” characterized by the integration of multiple forms through their continuous, optical expansion into pictorial space. Here, complex geometric patterns emerge out of the basic shape of a square. The framing rectangle is formed out of smaller squares, which split into triangles, re-organize into cubes, and morph into arrow-like shapes. The result is two contrasting and complementary compositions derived from the same geometric units.

This text was created in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and written by Patricia Ortega-Miranda.