Victor Vasarely was born in the city of Pécs, Hungary in 1906. He spent his childhood and teenage years in Pieštany (then Pöstyén) and later in Budapest.
Throughout his early life, Vasarely found himself drawn more towards the sciences than the arts, and in 1925 he applied for and was accepted at the University of Budapest’s School of Medicine where he spent two years studying.
In 1927 Vasarely made a radical and life changing decision – he decided to suspend his studies in medicine and change direction completely, making the decision to pursue a career in art. These years studying medicine were far from wasted though as the formal scientific training provided him with a strong sense of scientific method and objectivity – something that stood him in good stead throughout his artistic career.