Kedd

Vasarely studied graphic art at the Mühely Academy in Budapest under Alexander Bortnyik, a Hungarian painter and graphic designer who attended the Bauhaus in the early 1920s and embraced the integration of craft, design, and fine arts. He was later influenced by Bauhaus masters Johannes Itten and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, who investigated the ways in which form, color, and material engaged the senses. "Kedd" evokes the haptic quality of a translucent decorative surface. The central shape appears to protrude from a background surface, an optical illusion achieved through the use of contrasting tones in a limited, black-and-white range. The structure of the grid creates a precise distribution of pigments within the all-over pattern of small geometric shapes, producing a luminous effect that calls to mind the decorative designs of modernist house interiors and industrial materials such as plastic and acrylic.

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