Hatos II 1957 - 1962

Victor Vasarely made this painting, Hatos II, with a lot of colours, sometime in the 20th century. It looks like hard-edged abstraction, but the blocks also give off a certain light, like it’s all about the process of how to make a cube, a real systematic approach. These tumbling cubes in vibrant colours, remind me of the paintings of Josef Albers, but the paint handling is different. Vasarely's paint is smooth, almost matte, with clean lines. And those little squares of colour, the way they shift and change, is just mesmerizing. Look at how the squares of colour interact, how some colours advance and others recede. Vasarely makes each shade feel so deliberate. He almost reminds me of Bridget Riley, in the way that his paintings play tricks on the eye. It’s about surface and depth, flatness and illusion, all at the same time.