Unokája, Pierre Vasarely családjával érkezett az eseményre, ahol Tasnádi Péter Pécs Megyei Jogú Város polgármestere, dr. Kunszt Márta a Kulturális Bizottság elnöke, Ruzsa Csaba a Pécs2010 Kht. ügyvezető igazgatója, Pál Zoltán a Művészeti Tanács tagja, Takács Gyula (a pécsi Vasarely Múzeum létrehozásának-1976-vezető támogatója volt), Pitti Zoltán (az Europa Cantat Fesztivál-1988-kapcsán többször találkozott Victor Vasarelyvel), Dr. Végh József (Victor Vasarely pécsi látogatását szervezte, a programokra kísérte), Vígh Árpád (Victor Vasarely könyveit fordította magyarra a hetvenes-nyolcvanas években, később a Párizsi Magyar Intézet igazgatójaként közvetlen munkakapcsolatban állt vele), Pinczehelyi Sándor (a JPM grafikusaként a pécsi múzeum létrehozásakor a Vasarely kiadványok készítője volt, dolgozott Vasarely-vel), Fabényi Júlia (JPM igazgató, a mostani Vasarely kiállítások felelőse), Molnár G. Judit (a Művészetek és Irodalom Háza címzetes igazgatója), Sárkány József (JPM művészettörténész, a Vasarely "vándor" kiállítások rendezője), Péterné Marosy Katalin (vezérigazgató, Pierre Vasarely több együttműködést is kezdeményezett a Zsolnay Gyárral), Kismányoki Károly (a Vasarely film készítője), Catherine Feidt-Illés francia tiszteletbeli konzul, Jean Baudry a Pécsi Alliance Francaise igazgatója és Németh Csilla, Jean Boudry úr munkatársa társaságában folytatott beszélgetést. A rendezvényen a résztvevők felidézték a mesterrel kapcsolatos személyes élményeiket.

A program záróakkordjaként Pierre Vasarely átvette Tasnádi Péter polgármestertől a Pécs2010 EKF program védnöki felkérő oklevelét. A megbízással Pécs városa köszönetét kívánja kifejezni Pierre Vasarely jövőbeni közreműködéséért, amellyel hozzájárul Pécs hazai és nemzetközi hírnevének ápolásához. A védnök boldogan és büszkén vállalta a feladatot.

Az esemény előzményeként a Vasarely Múzeumban (Pécs, Káptalan u. 3.) 12-én Vasarely-kiállítás nyílt.

Diplôme de patronage

Décerné à Monsieur
Pierre Vasarely

qui porte officiellement aujourd'hui le titre de
Patron du programme Pécs2010
Capitale Européenne de la Culture.

Cette distinction est attribué par la Ville
de Pécs en remerciement du rôle de
M. Pierre Vasarely pour le rayonnement et la
promotion de la ville en Hongrie et à l'étranger.

Baranya County Museums' Directorate
Janus Pannonius Museum
cordially invites you to the opening of the exhibition

HOMMAGE A VICTOR VASARELY

on 12th December 2008, at 5 p.m.

Dr. Janos Hargitai
Chairman of the Baranya County Council

Péter Tasnadi
Mayor of Pécs

Opening remarks

Pierre Vasarely
President of the Association for the defense
and the promotion of Vasarely's work

PHILANTHROPIE & FONDATION
D'UTILITE PUBLIQUE
Des actes citoyens variés et récompensés

Conférence - Débat du 1er déc. 2008
pour la Fondation Vasarely
(Institut Hongrois, Paris)

Stéphane Couchoux
Avocat associé
Spécialisé en Mécénat & Fondation

Devenez partenaire
de la Fondation Vasarely.

Conférence et débat

Philantropie et Fondation reconnue d'utilité publique.

Institut Hongrois
92 rue de Bonaparte -75006 Paris

1er décembre 2008

Les œuvres du père de l'art optique, Victor Vasarely inaugureront mercredi 12 novembre la nouvelle galerie de l'Institut hongrois de Paris qui portera son nom. L'artiste, reconnu comme un grand novateur du XXe siècle, a révolutionné les notions de couleur et d'illusion optique. Il a été récompensé par de nombreux prix, dont le Guggenheim en 1964.

Vernissage de l'exposition

Hommage à Victor Vasarely

Institut Hongrois de Paris
92, rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris

Le mercredi 12 novembre 2008
de 18h30 à 21h

L'exposition est ouverte
du 7 novembre au 1er décembre 2008
tous les jours sauf dimanche et lundi
de 14h à 18h30.

Vasarely se fâche.

Déçu par le refus de la cour d'appel d'Aix-en-Provence d'annuler un arbitrage remontant à 1995 qui entraîna la dilapidation des œuvres de la Fondation Vasarely,le petit-fils du peintre, Pierre Vasarely, saisit la justice pénale.

Vasarely vermächtnis.

Victor Vasarelys futuristiche Bilder gehörten zu den 70er-Jahren wie Lavalampen und Pink-Floyd-Alben. Heute verfällt sein Museum in Südfankreich, seine Gemälde wurden gestohlen, verschleppt, unterschlagen und sind in alle Welt verstreut. Jetzt versucht der Enkel des Künstlers, das Erbe zu retten.

Institut Hongrois de Paris
Collegium Hungaricum

Programme octobre - décembre 2008

À mi-chemin de l'art et de l'économie.

À quelques jours de la fin de l'exposition itinérante d'œuvres de Vasarely, au sein même du bâtiment de la Fondation, vient d'être organisée par le centre des jeunes dirigeants d'Aix et du pays d'Aix une conférence sur le thème du mécénat culturel...

Vasarely : l'interminable feuilleton judiciaire.

Depuis dix-sept ans, les procédures et les coups bas s'enchaînent autour de la fondation consacrée au peintre hongrois, décédé en 1997.

La cour d'appel de Paris compétente pour le recours contre le partage des œuvres.

La Fondation contestait pour fraude la répartition d’œuvres de Vasarely effectuée en 1995.

Fondation Vasarely :
le TGI d'Aix se déclare incompétent sur l'arbitrage successoral

Le 16/10/2008 à 18:25

Hommage à Vasarely (voir l'exposition)

Vasarely encore et toujours

Les toiles de Vasarely retrouvent leur fondation.

Avec cet "Hommage à Victor Vasarely", soixante œuvres originales, réalisées entre 1930 et 1980, dont une dizaine issue de collections privées, sont à découvrir à la Fondation Vasarely.

Vasarely’s Victory
By Kolby Yarnell

La grande foule pour le retour de Vasarely.

Exposition : "Hommage à Victor Vasarely" se tient à la Fondation.

Concert inaugural "Hommage à Vasarely"

FONDATION VASARELY
vendredi 19 septembre - 19 heures

JEAN SEBASTIEN BACH - Suite n°3 BWV 1009
Prélude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Bourée 1 et 2
Gigue

Invitation.

Hommage à Victor Vasarely

Fondation Vasarely
Aix-en-Provence

19 septembre - 30 octobre

De Vasarhelyi à Vasarely.

Inaugurée en février 1976, en la bonne ville d'Aix-en-Provence, la Fondation Vasarely était apparu comme un lieu phare (le seul à cette époque ?) consacré de manière permanente à l'art moderne. Puis il y eut les affaires.

Institut Hongrois de Paris.
Collegium Hungaricum

Exposition
Hommage à Victor Vasarely

Vasarely revient dans ses murs pour six semaines.

Une exposition itinérante de soixante œuvres arrive vendredi à Aix.

La série judiciaire s'enrichit de nouveaux épisodes

Fondation Vasarely : L'arbitrage conclu en 1995 est-il valable?

Vasarely : querelles éternelles

Depuis 2004, Michèle Taburno-Vasarely, 67 ans, vit à Chicago, en partie de la vente de toiles de son defunt beau-père. Pour Pierre Vasarhelyi, petit-fils du peintre (à droite) investi par testament du droit moral sur son œuvre, il s'agit d'un combat de dix ans pour la mémoire de son grand-père.

Les héritiers étaient de retour hier devant la justice. L'enjeu : des centaines de toiles signées du maître de «l'Optical art», et l'avenir de la fondation aixoise

Succession Vasarely:
le TGI d'Aix dira s'il est compétent le 16 octobre

Il y a 5 jours

Les Vasarely de retour au tribunal

Indiscrets

Vasarely : 200 certificats en blanc saisis aux USA.

Droit de réponse de Pierre Vasarely à l'article de Libération du 3 septembre 2008.

I have read a translation of the article referenced above. Mr. Vincent Noce who wrote the article never contacted Mr. Monahan for his comments on the accuracy of the contents asserted in the article. Mr. Monahan's actions in Chicago have nothing to do with Pierre Vasarely. Mr. Monahan does not assert or contend that Pierre Vasarely is responsible for any of the matters asserted in the referenced article.

On August 29, 2008, the police did not come to Mr. Monahan's private home to seize over 100 pieces of Vasarely art. No archives or works were returned to Michele Vasarely. It is our position that this article is substantially and materially incorrect and unless retracted will mislead the reading public and/or inappropriately interfere with the French court on the eve of its major hearing next week.

Therefore, please accept this correspondence as our demand for a right of response to correct the misinformation published by the referenced article. Further, my client reserves all other rights and remedies relating to same.

David Melnick
cc : Pierre Vasarely (pierre.vasarely@vasarely.net)

Bien que visé par un mandat d'arrêt international, Charles Debbasch, ancien doyen de la faculté de droit d'Aix-en-Provence exilé au Togo, s'est rendu sans encombre à Paris le 13 juillet : il s'est présenté, de son plein gré, au service du parquet chargé de l'exécution des peines pour se constituer prisonnier. Mais son arrivée a suscité plus d'embarras que d'intérêt... si bien qu'il est reparti libre sans être fixé sur son sort. Condamné en 2005 pour « abus de confiance » dans l'affaire de la Fondation Vasarely, Debbasch doit purger une peine d'un an de prison, diminuée des deux mois et demi de détention provisoire effectués en 1994. Par l'effet des remises de peine ordinaires, il lui reste moins de six mois à purger, ce qui lui permet d'obtenir un aménagement de sa peine sans retourner en prison. Encore faut-il que la procédure adéquate soit enclenchée-ce que les magistrats se sont refusés à faire. Debbasch a donc repris l'avion pour Lomé. Sans être intercepté.
Hervé Gattégno

An ambitious revival of the work of Hungarian artist Victor Vasarély reminds us how much he has influenced the fields of architecture and design, writes Aidan Dunne.
VICTOR VASARÉLY may not be a name that rolls off the tongue, but he was, not all that long ago, one of the most famous artists in the world. He lived from 1908 to 1997, and he attained the height of his fame in the 1960s although, since then, the public profile and significance of Op Art, the movement he more or less invented and which is closely identified with him, has diminished in importance to the point where it's all but disappeared.
All the more surprising, then, that the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny, together with the Glebe Gallery at Churchill, should take on the task of mounting a Vasarély revival by organising and hosting a retrospective exhibition of his work. It was an ambitious thing to do, but it was worth doing: the show is terrific, both fascinating and easily accessible to a wide audience.
As the art historian Jasia Reichardt observed: "A unique aspect of the movement was its nearly simultaneous arrival on both fronts - the esoteric and the popular." Op Art could be described as a companion to or even a special case of kinetic art, which entails the use of movement. Nothing actually moved in Op Art, but our eyes are often led to believe that something is moving. Op is short for Optical and Op artists exploit the mechanics of vision to create variously intriguing and unsettling effects, turning two dimensions into three, making pictorial space advance and recede, or making it impossible for us to focus and grasp a single image.
Given all that, you can immediately grasp the appeal Op Art holds for everyone, including children. It plays games with our eyes and makes us think about looking and seeing. It is essentially an abstract art, extensively employing geometric patterns. Vasarély worked with black-and-white but he was also brilliant with colour. The other acknowledged precursor and shaper of Op was Joseph Albers, best known for his open-ended project Homage to the Square, which explored the limitless optical possibilities offered by the juxtaposition of colours in a simple geometric format. Vasarély was temperamentally inclined towards greater complication, generating extraordinarily complex virtual worlds of abstraction, though he was not always or exclusively an abstract artist.
VASARÉLY WAS BORN in Pecs, Hungary, in 1908. Initially he studied medicine but switched to art, attending an academy informally known as the "Bauhaus of Budapest" before moving to Paris in 1930. One year later he married Klára Spinner, and he found employment as a graphic artist, working for a number of firms. He was already interested in the ambiguity of perception, and made a number of graphic pieces reminiscent in some respects of MC Escher's elaborate optical illusions. His representational drawings have a poised, Art Deco quality, and over time he was open to a number of influences, including Surrealism and, more pertinently perhaps, Cubism and Futurism, though he characterised much of his early work as consisting of fausses routes ("wrong roads").
While it is striking that his work depends on the exposition of a flawless geometrical logic, rendered with machine-like clarity and precision, the great advantage of seeing his paintings in the flesh is that we can immediately see that they were made by the human hand.
Part of their essence, in fact, is the tension between the nuance of the human touch and the inexorable schemes of order so carefully mapped out by means of that touch. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Vasarély developed a visual language that, while applied to subjects derived from everyday life, was really abstract. The paintings from this period are really beautiful.
Usually quite small, they employ bold though toned down, slightly burnished colours. Their compositions are made up of interlocking networks of flat colour planes. Although relatively simple in that each features relatively few elements, they are very sophisticated in the way they keep our eyes busily engaged. One would never tire of one of these pictures because there is always some other aspect to discover, another combination of colours and shapes to focus on. Nor are they predictable in a wider sense. Some take off in entirely unexpected directions and are as fresh and immediate as though they were made yesterday.
At the same time, he was working on more challenging, overtly theoretical pieces in black-and-white, and they led on to what might be termed the classical phase of Op. The general trend of his work was crystalised in a group exhibition, Le Mouvement, that took place at his instigation in the Galerie Denise René in 1955. As the title might suggest, the show was a landmark in the development of kinetic art, and included works by Marcel Duchamp, Jean Tinguely and Alexander Calder.
Vasarély himself, though, while he moved quite happily into three dimensions, didn't go on to embrace the fourth, time, in the same way as Tinguely. Time becomes a relevant factor in relation to our perceptual experience of Vasarély's work, rather than the work itself changing over time.
AS HE WENT on to create fantastically complex elaborations of grid-based patterns based on circles, ellipses, squares, rhomboids and triangles, it might seem that the images became increasingly abstract and, in a sense, inhuman. Certainly, the association of abstraction with Modernism, and the pronounced swing away from abstraction and towards exclusively social and psychological meaning in art that came with Post-Modernism, have contributed to Vasarély's drift into relative obscurity. But as curators John Cunningham and Adrian Kelly rightly point out, his art was always profoundly social.
In 1958, he famously wrote that: "I believe that I am able to point to the existence in my works of an architectonic, abstract art from, a sort of universal folk lore, whose language is readily adaptable to the highly developed techniques of urban construction."
It is true that his art is inherently architectonic, and it has been influential in the fields of architecture and design, to the extent that it has entered into contemporary consciousness and is part of the way we see things. It's also true that his notion of modernity and the contemporary have, as is often the case, dated. The present is rarely the future we imagined.
In a wider sense, he was an artistic democrat in that he believed that art is for everyone and should not only be available to everyone but is an essential part of daily life. With his background in design and mass-reproduction, it makes sense that he sought to make his own work generally available by means of high-quality printing processes.
Some of his serigraphs are included in the exhibition and, in their richness of colour and the subtlety of their tonal modulations, they bear out his belief that the essential qualities of his art would come through in reproduction. They are gorgeous objects.
In a way, he anticipated a world of computer graphics and the depthless space of the digital television screen, but what is especially fascinating about the exhibition is the physical actuality of the work. When, in making a black-and-white composition made up of myriad circles and circular fragments, he has to amend a few outline with white gouache, it heightens rather than diminishes the overall effect. He was clearly taken with the purity of edges, how one colour abuts another, yet the perfect edges, and the objective geometry of the compositions, are especially fascinating because they are dreamed up by a mind and fashioned by hand.
• Victor Vasarély (1906-1997), a retrospective exhibition, the Regional Cultural Centre, Port Road, Letterkenny, and The Glebe Gallery, Churchill. Until Aug 30.

© 2008 The Irish Times

Droit de réponse de Pierre Vasarely à l'article de Libération du 18 juillet 2008.

Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) is internationally recognised as one of giants of 20th century art. He is the acknowledged leader of the Op Art movement, and his innovations in colour and optical illusion and in the democratisation of art, have had a profound influence on contemporary art and design.
Vasarely was born in Pécs, Hungary in 1906. He studied at the Mühely Academy (also known as the Budapest Bauhaus), where he became familiar with contemporary research in colour and optics by Albers, Moholy-Nagy and the Constructivists Malevich and Kandinsky. In 1930, he moved to Paris and for the next thirteen years, he devoted himself to graphic studies. In 1944, he held his first Parisian exhibition at the Galerie Denise René (which he helped found) and became the recognised leader of the avant-garde group of artists affiliated with the gallery.
By 1947, Vasarely had discovered his true place in abstract art. Influenced by his experiences at Breton Beach of Belle Isle, he concluded that “internal geometry” could be seen below the surface of the world and that form and colour are inseparable - “Every form is a base for colour, every colour is the attribute of a form.” During the 1950’s, he wrote a series of books on the use of optical phenomena, arguing that visual dynamics (plastique cinétique) relied on the eye of the viewer (who he considered to be the sole creator of the work), playing with optical illusions. In 1955, Vasarely initiated a (now legendary) group exhibition at Galerie Denise René entitled ‘Le Mouvment’ (the motion). In addition to Marcel Duchamp and Alexander Calder, it included works by Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Jesús Rafael Soto, Yaakov Agam and Jean Tinguely, which provided a framework and impetus for the artists who were laying the foundations of Kinetic Art.
In 1965, following the inclusion of his art in the Museum of Modern Art’s – ‘The Response Eye’ exhibition, Vasarely became an international art superstar and for the next twenty years, the public’s appetite for his dynamic works was insatiable.
He died in Paris, in 1997, just shy of his 91st birthday.
The Regional Cultural Centre and The Glebe House & Gallery are delighted to offer the Irish public an unprecedented opportunity to appreciate and engage with the extraordinary artistic and cultural output of Victor Vasarely and his influence on 20th Century Art and beyond. Accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue.

VICTOR VASARELY (Works 1930 – 1955)
Thursday 10th July – Saturday 30th August
Churchill, The Glebe Gallery
11am – 6.30pm
The Glebe Gallery exhibition examines Vasarely’s early career from 1930 – 1955. Focusing on his initial influences and on the development of his orginal geometric abtract language. These were primarily drawn from his observations of the everyday, be they the white tiled walls of the Rochereau Métro Station (Paris): the ellipsoid pebbles and shells found on the Breton coast at Belle Île (1947): or the cubic houses of Gordes in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (1948). From these, he developed kinematic images to create dynamic and dizzying impressions as depicted in his iconic ‘Noir et blanc’ and ‘Photographimses’ series (1951- 1955).
VICTOR VASARELY (Works 1956 – 1980)
Thursday 10th July – Saturday 30th August
Letterkenny, Regional Cultural Centre
11am – 5pm Tuesday – Friday
1pm - 5pm Saturday (Open daily for the duration of the festival)
Vasarely believed in the social function of art in society and in the artist as a contributor and catalyst for social progress. His work was an accessible vision that integrated art into everyday life. Today, in the Digital Age of the Internet, Vasarely’s art takes on new relevance and not just in his illusionistic paintings. The exhibition will focus on the creation of his ‘Unité Plastique’ and ‘Planetary Folklore’ series of the 50’s / 60’s, and on his development of the ‘Vega’ works and his ‘veneration of the hexagon’ in the 70’s.
Le Mouvement 2008
Thursday 10th July – Friday 15th August
Letterkenny, Regional Cultural Centre, Workshop 3
11am – 5pm
A re-creation of the famous kinetic and Op Art exhibition ‘Le Mouvement’ (Paris 1955), as interpreted by a group of primary students and artist Mhairi Sutherland. Includes a process room. Come and try make your own Vasarely’s!
VICTOR VASARELY RETROSPECTIVE
Seminar Sunday 13th
11am – 1pm Gallery Space, Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny
Free
Pierre Vasarely (Foundation Vasarely, France), Dr Józef Sárkány (Vasarely Museum, Hungary) and Adrian Kelly (Glebe Gallery) discuss the life and works of Victor Vasarely.

Droit de réponse

Arts, Briefly
Artist’s Daughter-in-Law Accused of Theft
Compiled by STEVEN McELROY
Published : June 30, 2008

ART & CRIME
Vasarely Daughter-in-Law Arrested for Theft of Artworks
By ARTINFO
Published : June 27, 2008

Vol de tableaux aux USA : la belle-fille de Vasarely remet son passeport

La belle-fille de Vasarely devant la justice.

La belle-fille du peintre Vasarely
arrêtée pour vol

Une histoire de trahison et de vol rocambolesque, sur fond de dispute familiale, a conduit à l'arrestation aux Etats-Unis de la belle-fille du peintre Viktor Vasarely.

La belle-fille du peintre Vasarely arrêtée à Chicago pour vol de tableaux
AFP 26.06.08 | 16h10

Le feuilleton Vasarely rebondit à Chicago.

Michel Taburno-Vasarely en Prison aux USA pour tentative de vol de tableaux.

Cette affaire incroyable survient alors qu'une audience importante doit se tenir au tribunal d'Aix, en septembre.