1. The 1960s

2. Events
• Assassination of President Kennedy (1963)
• British pop/rock music

3. Op art
• Victor Vasarely began this movement with his
1938 painting ‘zebra’
• Abstract and Expressionist movements helped
form op art due deconstructing subject matters.
• Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Marina Apollonio,
Richard Anuskiewitz and Julian Stanczak were the
first Opital artists.
• In 1964 ‘Time magazine’ gave it the name‘op art’.
After reviewing the responsive eye exhibition.

4. ZEBRA
ZEBRA
‘ZEBRA’

5. THE RESPONSIVE
• In 1965 William. C. Seitz held an
exhibition at the museum of modern art
in New york city
• It focused on perceptual aspects of art
which result of illusion of movement and
the interaction of colour relationships.

6. The critics hated it.

7. The public loved it.

8. • After the Responsive eye
exhibition the public was
fascinated with optical art.
• Advertisements began to use it.
They took inspiration Riley’s
and
Vasarely’s
compositiona
l styles.
Riley tried to
sue one
fashion industry for printing her
work on dresses. 

9. Julian Stanczak
• Born in Poland in 1928.
• In 1940 he was taken to a
concentration camp in Siberia.
• There he lost the use of his right
arm (which he drawn with.) He was only 10.
• AT JUST 13 HE ESCAPED. He made it to Persia and joined a
resistance army. Then to a refugee camp in Uganda.
• At 21 he made it to America with an idea in his head of the
‘American dream’. There he made it to a shelter and was fed.
The American dream was to him. ‘The feeling of being full’
• In the 50s he attended Yale.
• But was his art influenced by his personal experience…..?

10. NO!
• “Everybody was trying to push me to paint
from my experience. Why do you drown in the
misery of your problems? Who cares if you
suffer? Everyone suffers!”
• HOWEVER. The lost of his arm caused him to
be careful with geometry. Any precision
requires tape to create guides before paint
was applied.

11. Obsession (1960’s)

12. Vetical succession (1990’s)

13. Structural (1960’s)

14. QUOTES
“I was trying to understand how I see- how
we see altogether.”
“Any line creates energy”
“I’m not painting for myself. I’m painting
for curiosity.”
“I didn’t know I was making art.”