Alphabet VB – Victor Vasarely 1960 Acrylic on canvas 160x150cm
During this period, Vasarely evolved his ‘Alphabet Plastique’ – a grid based system which established modular relationships between forms and colours. This period marked the reintroduction of colour to Vasarely’s works in the two major series of this time – Alphabet Plastique and Folklore Planetaire.
In the Alphabet Plastique series, each painting was based on 15 root forms derived from the circle, square and triangle. Variations on these root forms were then developed and painted using colours from different colour scales, each with 20 hues. Each unit within the grid – a ‘unite plastique’ – has a foreground and a background.
What Vasarely in effect created was an art programming language that allowed for endless permutations of forms and colours to create individual and unique works. With the Folklore Planetaire series Vasarely wanted to reach out through his universal language to transmit basic human values to the general public outside of the art establishment.