What made Vasarely so popular? In addition to his public commissions, to which he had dedicated a great part of his creative ability, it is a fact that, despite his incredible diversity, the effect stemmed from the simplest elements. His persuasive power is optical.

Vasarely built on the feasibility of form, counted on the functional effect of norms, relied on optical kinetics, with which he achieved a captivating plasticity. His premises remained the simple basic shapes and their multiplication. In Vasarely's own words: 'In my works, the original is not the easel painting but the basic prototype, which plays the role of the programming score.' Vasarely saw himself as the creator of a universal language. For his sketches, he used all the graphic techniques available to him, as well as photomechanics and electronics. He thus became a prophet of computer art, of encodable, depersonalized graphic systems and one of the most popular graphic artists of his times. He creates paintings, murals, tapestries, architectural integration and 'multiples'. Graphic art was assigned a very significant role. Works of incredible precision and proud splendor are produced. Vasarely made 'a virtue of multiplicability', writes Peter Anselm Riedl in the Wiesloch Catalogue (1986), in which the majority of his graphics published by Grafos are pictured.

Vasarely's artistic and graphic ideas, a fusion of decorative and abstract art, was soon taken over by the design and interior decoration industries. He represented a European type of Pop Art and Op Art, a geometrisation of the world of forms which was soon reflected in all the media. This popularization suited Vasarely's pedagogical ambitions, a sort of artistic mission which also led him to found institutes, museums and research centers with his name. Thus Vasarely put his ideas on the interdisciplinary work of art into concrete form. His ideas included the dream of colorful city, the city of colors, the cité polychrome. Vasarely proclaimed 'a break with the hybrid past', 'rejected the antiquated definitions of art and artist'. 'Art' he defined as having a 'significant social function'. There are few artists who have received as many renowned awards and honors as he. His belief in the possibilities of technology, feasibility and progress was an idealism rooted in the 20th century. His pictorial insight was based on Bauhaus principles and their utopian views. He finally gave himself to a, one might say, functional Baroque, to an optical illusionism which irritated the retina. His motifs were characterized by ambivalent optical impressions. Vexation stood as the focal point. Here is where the aesthetic experience begins for the viewer, the optical game, the fascination of the optical illusion - Vasarely's school of sight. ek