Victor Vasarely (French: [viktɔʁ vazaʁeli]; born Győző Vásárhelyi, Hungarian: [ˈvaːʃaːrhɛji ˈɟøːzøː]; 9 April 1906[1] – 15 March 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader[2] of the Op art movement.

Vasarely was born in Pécs and grew up in Piešťany (then Pöstény) and Budapest, where, in 1925, he took up medical studies at Eötvös Loránd University.

After the Second World War, he opened an atelier in Arcueil, a suburb about 10 kilometers from the center of Paris (in the Val-de-Marne département of the Île-de-France).

Over the next three decades, Vasarely developed his style of geometric abstract art, working in various materials but using a minimal number of forms and colours: In October 1967, designer Will Burtin invited Vasarely to make a presentation to Burtin's Vision '67 conference, held at New York University.

In the same decade, he took a stab at industrial design with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Vasarely decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain maker's Studio Linie.

[4] In 1982, 154 specially created serigraphs were taken into space by the cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chrétien on board the French-Soviet spacecraft Salyut 7 and later sold for the benefit of UNESCO.

[5] In 2019, a temporary exhibition of Vasarely's work titled Le Partage des Formes was displayed in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.