Soeglet 1983

Victor Vasarely made this painting, Soeglet, using flat planes of color to conjure a sense of three-dimensional depth. Vasarely's process is less about traditional brushwork and more about meticulous planning and execution. Looking closely, you can see how the varying sizes and shades of the squares create the illusion of a bulging form. The texture is smooth, almost clinical, and the colors—those lilacs and blues—vibrate against each other. There's a kind of controlled chaos here, a tension between the flat surface and the implied volume. It reminds me a bit of Bridget Riley's work, but where Riley's lines dance and flicker, Vasarely's squares are more regimented, more architectural. This piece seems less about the hand and more about the eye, about how we perceive and construct space. Ultimately, it's a testament to the power of simple forms, carefully arranged, to mess with our minds.