Stri-Archt II 1977

Victor Vasarely made *Stri-Archt II* with simple, seductive geometry that seems to push and pull, inflate and deflate. Can you feel that? I'm imagining Vasarely meticulously plotting this out, and I’m thinking about the moment when the last circle gets placed. Did he breathe a sigh of relief, or did he immediately start thinking about the next permutation? The repetition, the subtle shifts in color - it all adds up to this crazy, vibrating surface. I can sense Vasarely’s interest in science and the way our eyes trick us into seeing depth where there is none. I’m sure he looked at Josef Albers’s work and asked himself how far he could push color. He was committed to making art accessible to a wide audience and produced multiples of his work, similar to screenprints by Andy Warhol. It's an ongoing conversation, you know? Artists are always responding to each other, playing with ideas, and pushing the boundaries of what painting can be, hopefully, influencing us in the process.