VASARELY, SHARING FORMS
6 FEBRUARY-6 MAY 2019
GALERIE 2, LEVEL 6 Centre Pompidou
#Vasarely #Art #Exhibition #Paris #Centre #Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou presents the first major retrospective in France to be dedicated to Victor Vasarely.
Through three hundred works, objects and documents, the exhibition explores the world of Vasarely and showcases all the facets of the prolific creation of the father of optic art, presenting every aspect of his work from paintings, sculptures, multiples and architectural integrations
to advertisements and early studies.
The exhibition follows a chronological and thematic path through the major steps of his work,from his artistic training in the wake of the Bauhaus movement to his final experiments inspired by science fiction, via his project for a universal visual language and the ambition of art as a form
of social mass media.
Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) spent his childhood and early youth in Hungary and moved to Paris in 1930, where he worked as a graphic designer in advertising before devoting himself fully to art after the war.
His abstract style, based on the observation of reality, would rapidly start
to integrate the quirks and disorders of vision. In the mid-1950s, he laid the foundations for what would become known, a decade later, as Op Art. A key moment in the history of abstraction,optical-kinetic art, based on a strictly scientific process, offered up unstable images in which paint became an art of time as much as an art of space. At the same time, he worked to develop a formal language to enable multiple makeovers in various situations, particularly in architecture.
Vasarely’s work was fully rooted in the scientific, economic and social context of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to presenting a large range of works, some of which have not be exhibited for over fifty years, the exhibition also reveals the influence of Vasarely’s art in the popular culture of his era (in fashion, design, graphic arts, film and television, etc.), highlighting his keyrole in the psyche of the post-war boom years.
CURATORS
Michel Gauthier, Curator, Department of Contemporary Collections at the Musée National d’Art Moderne
Arnauld Pierre, Professor of Art History, Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV) assisted by Mathilde Marchand, Head of Research at the Musée National d’Art Moderne
Head of Production:Malika Noui
Exhibition Design:Camille Excoffon
Centre Pompidou, 75191 Paris cedex 04
- 33 1 44 78 12 33
Access: metro Hôtel de Ville and Rambuteau, RER Châtelet-Les-Halles.
Opening times: every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., except Tuesdays and May 1*
Admission: €14, reduced price €11
Free for those under 18. Young people under 26*, teachers and students at schools of art, drama, dance and music and members
of the Maison des artistes may visit the Museum for free and buy tickets for exhibitions at the concessionary rate. Free admission
for Centre Pompidou members
Home printable tickets: centrepompidou.fr