The Phillips Collects: Victor Vasarely

The Phillips Collection is proud to share recent acquisitions that demonstrate the museum’s efforts to enhance and diversify the collection. The Phillips has acquired its first two works by Victor Vasarely: Vega WA-2 and Capella I.

Victor Vasarely (b. 1906, Pécs, Hungary; d. 1997, Paris, France) is known as the “father of Op art” and his dizzying geometrical abstractions embody the spirit of technological developments during the Space Age. Vega WA-2 and Capella I display the pictorial system that Vasarely developed from the logic of algorithmic and binary code. Vasarely’s system called for a colored square background filled with geometric shapes. He originally focused on the stark contrast of black and white, but by 1968 the artist incorporated color and gradients to allow for infinite variations of geometric optical illusions. Vega WA-2 and Capella I are the first works by the artist in the collection, complementing other Op and contemporary works by artists that focus on color and geometry, such as Gilbert Hsiao, Anil Revri, and Leo Villareal.