Sonora VIII 1973

Victor Vasarely made this eye-popping geometric abstraction, Sonora VIII, by deploying hard-edged shapes and blocks of color in an all-over composition. I can only imagine how much time Vasarely spent refining this design. Every form, every hue, feels precise. And yet, his palette is almost playful: oranges, yellows, blues and greens, all bumping up against each other. It’s so controlled and balanced, even if the implied forms don’t quite line up. It creates a real tension, like a magician who only nearly pulls off the trick! The relationships between the different planes shift as you walk around the artwork. I feel like I could get lost in there, in that puzzle of shapes and colors. You can really see how artists build on each other's ideas and push painting into new directions. It's like a never-ending conversation across time.