translated by Giorgina Arcuri

In the wide ambit of Op Art and Kinetic Art, the Hungarian naturalized French Victor Vasarely holds the role of protagonist. During his artistic career, Vasarely develops a language characterized by the most typical abstractionism, free of any lyricism and firmly bound to pure geometry, in compositions with a precise constructive layout of almost architectonic definition in their aspiration towards three-dimensionality, where the third dimension is represented by movement.
Vasarely uses three-dimensional language in all his works, opposing in the same image different perspective systems, according to his own research on the scientific properties of colours and lines, aimed at creating virtual images, able to create a sort of optical aberration in the spectator.
We can definitely say that Vasarely holds a dominant role in the history of art and that, eleven years after his death, he still influences the new millennium artists and, as every respectable celebrity, is often present in the gossip pages of the world of art, given that the question relative to his heredity seams an endless soap opera that has been keeping France with its breath held for years.
Indeed, since Victor Vasarely passed away on 15th March 1997 at the age of 91 years, we have witnessed continuous contrasts regarding the great Hungarian artist’s hereditary succession and memory. At the time of the opening of his will, which he left before dying, it was decided that the heredity was due to his elder son, Andrè Vasarely, to his younger son, Jean-Pierre Vasarely, to his wife (Michèle Taburlo) and her son. At the end of the will, dated 11th April 1993, Victor Vasarely gave his grandson all the available part and specified that he was the only one who could guarantee the perpetuity and the prosecution of his work within the Vasarely Foundation,
The various “rows” in the French court rooms seemed to have come to an end, but actually, according to recent information, the question has never been concluded.
The next episode will take place on 12th June, when the court of Aix-en-Provence will examine the last citation of Xavier Huertas, legal administrator of the Vasarely Foundation, which had denounced the heirs for taking fraudulently 130 works by the Hungarian artist, which he had given to the foundation. According to the accusation, Michèle Taburlo, wife of one of the artist’s sons, is now at the centre of attention. As a representative of the institution, she would have damaged it in favour of her husband and Varsely’s other son, with a huge conflict of interests. Currently Huertas is proposing in court the annulment of the arbitration, the return of the works kept by the heirs and more than 5 million euros for damages.