Lomna 1949

Victor Vasarely made Lomna with paint, probably oil, with a restrained palette of black, brown and yellow. The colours are quietly intense, and the texture suggests this was a painting worked on slowly, with time for the layers to dry. Look at how the flat shapes create depth, pushing and pulling our perception. I'm drawn to the sharp angles of the yellow triangle, it reminds me of hard-edged abstraction, but here the colour creates a more soft and gentle relationship with the other shapes. It’s really clever how the artist made such sharp lines with such a seemingly worn surface; the brown areas almost look cracked. Vasarely’s exploration of geometric forms and optical effects always makes me think of Bridget Riley, another artist who used abstraction to create visual experiences that play with our perception. Art is like a visual conversation and what seems like a simple conversation of shape and colour becomes richer and more complex as the conversation evolves.