The 1960s

Events

• Assassination of President Kennedy (1963)• British pop/rock music

Op art• Victor Vasarely began this movement with his

1938 painting ‘zebra’ • Abstract and Expressionist movements helped

form op art due deconstructing subject matters.• Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Marina Apollonio,

Richard Anuskiewitz and Julian Stanczak were the first Opital artists.

• In 1964 ‘Time magazine’ gave it the name‘op art’. After reviewing the responsive eye exhibition.

‘ZEBRA’

ZEBRAZEBRA

THE RESPONSIVE

• In 1965 William. C. Seitz held an exhibition at the museum of modern art in New york city

• It focused on perceptual aspects of art which result of illusion of movement and the interaction of colour relationships.

The critics hated it.

The public loved it.

• After the Responsive eye exhibition the public was fascinated with optical art.

• Advertisements began to use it. They took inspiration Riley’s

and Vasarely’s compositional styles. Riley tried to sue one

fashion industry for printing her work on dresses.

Julian Stanczak

• Born in Poland in 1928. • In 1940 he was taken to a concentration camp in Siberia. • There he lost the use of his right arm (which he drawn with.) He was only 10.• AT JUST 13 HE ESCAPED. He made it to Persia and joined a

resistance army. Then to a refugee camp in Uganda.• At 21 he made it to America with an idea in his head of the

‘American dream’. There he made it to a shelter and was fed. The American dream was to him. ‘The feeling of being full’

• In the 50s he attended Yale.• But was his art influenced by his personal experience…..?

NO!• “Everybody was trying to push me to paint

from my experience. Why do you drown in the misery of your problems? Who cares if you suffer? Everyone suffers!”

• HOWEVER. The lost of his arm caused him to be careful with geometry. Any precision requires tape to create guides before paint was applied.

Obsession (1960’s)

Vetical succession (1990’s)

Structural (1960’s)

QUOTES

“I was trying to understand how I see- how we see altogether.”“Any line creates energy”“I’m not painting for myself. I’m painting for curiosity.”“I didn’t know I was making art.”