Celenderis 1950

Victor Vasarely made Celenderis with paint, layering geometric forms of greens and yellows. I can really feel the hand in the paint here. Look closely, and you’ll see it’s not as smooth as it seems from a distance. It’s got this almost chalky surface, which gives the whole composition a kind of warmth. The green kind of looms, and the yellow, with its hard edges, pushes back, like some kind of strange architectural face-off. I keep coming back to where the yellow spears into the green – it's so sharp, and also kind of awkward. It reminds me of how hard it can be to make simple shapes really lock together. When I look at this, I think of Josef Albers and his Homage to the Square series, but Vasarely throws in this graphic punch. It’s like a design problem, but with real heart. The whole thing feels like an invitation to keep looking, to find new ways to make flat shapes suggest depth and tension.