Victor Vasarely was one of the most celebrated artists of the second half of the 20th century. His rich and varied pictorial oeuvre in the field of geometric abstraction is founded on fine and color, contrast and rhythm. His architectural works, from the Caracas university campus to the building for his Foundation in Aix-en-Provence, are testimony to his desire to integrate art into everyday life and the urban space. His theories on multiples, industrial reproduction and the social mission of art left their mark on his times. His investigation of forms and the experimental aspect of his practice developed into an interest in how the work of art is perceived and vision-related phenomena : this made him one of the leaders of kinetic art, which went on to become one of the most important artistic trends of the 1960s in Europe and in the world. The exhibition at the Musée d'Ixelles (Belgium), in partnership with the Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich (Switzerland) and the EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art (Finland), is the first exhibition in a long time to be exclusively devoted to Vasarely's paintings and highlights the originality of his creation. It comprises more than sixty impressive paintings from 1947 to 1979 which illustrate the two essential components of his oeuvre, his black and white and his color work, and the main compositional groupings and arrangements of forms which he adopted. The visual richness and undeniable beauty of the paintings exhibited reveal what a great painter Vasarely was.

Vasarely

La [...] contrainte venait de moi-même, que l'œuvre choisie ait un point commun très fort avec une de mes obsessions. Ce point fort, c'est le système avec la série qui lui fait suite, excellente orme pour faire la chasse aux décisions subjectives. Là, Monet est un prodigieux peintre systématique, champion des séries, trente cathédrales, trente-six meules, dix peupliers... Ce côté, peu connu du grand public, va pour moi plus loin dans ses conséquences que ses analyses merveilleuses de Io lumière, qu'il a génialement partagées avec d'outres artistes. - François Morellet, 2006. A l'invitation du musée d'Orsay, des artistes d'aujourd'hui dialoguent avec les collections en choisissant l'œuvre de laquelle ils se sentent proches. Naît ainsi la possibilité de voir les collections sous un nouveau jour. Aux frontières de l'Art minimal et de l'Art conceptuel, François Morellet construit une œuvre rigoureuse, refusant tout sentiment au profit d'une neutralité active. C'est vers Monet et sa série des Cathédrales de Rouen qu'il s'est tourné pour ces " Correspondances " en réalisant au moyen de tubes de néon ces Trois Démonétisations.

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