Victor Vasarely & Op Art - Lesson Plan

Aug 20, 2026

Upload by Mason

Lesson plan focused on Victor Vasarely and Op Art, using graphic design principles and color theory to produce optical illusions. Students create a grid-based artwork by drawing a structured grid, coloring it with cool colors, adding a traced and cut circle, and connecting curved lines to distort perspective. Warm colors are applied to intensify depth effects, while optional variations allow experimentation with grid shape, spacing, and additional circles. Includes enduring understandings, essential questions, vocabulary, materials, procedures, and relevant artistic process standards.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Lesson: Victor Vasarely & OpArt

Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions

Lesson Objectives

About the Artist

Project and Materials

Vocabulary

Procedure (Steps 1-7)

Optional Variations and Optional Wrap Up

Standards (Artistic Process and NY State Standards)

Lesson: Victor Vasarely & OpArt Artist: Victor Vasarely Born: April 9, 1906; Pécs, Hungary Died: March 15, 1997; Paris, France Period/Movement: OpArt, Kinetic Art, Modernism and Modern Art Victor Vasarely (French, born Hungary, 1906–1997). Vega-Nor, 1969. Oil on canvas. 78¾ x 78¾ inches (200 x 200 cm). Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1969 (K1969:29). © Fondation Vasarely / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Enduring Understandings: Creating and experimenting with a form of art in which graphic design is combined with mathematics and color theory to create optical illusions. Essential Questions: How do line and color work together to create a sense of depth? Lesson Objectives: Use some of Vasarely’s techniques to learn about and create a piece of OpArt. To experiment with line and warm and cool colors to achieve the illusions. About the Artist Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian-French artist who provided the world with some of the most distinctive images and optical effects in twentieth-century art. He is considered one of the first artists to create Op art. His career began in Paris in the 1930s and 1940s where he worked as a commercial graphic designer. He used these skills during the final decades of his career honing what he hoped would become a new universal language for art and architectural design by combining incredible technical precision with a scientific awareness of optical and geometrical effects. He is best known for his grid-like paintings and sculptures of the 1960s onwards. These play with the reader’s sense of visual form by creating illusory, flickering effects of depth, perspective, and motion. The result is a fun interaction with the art where the viewer tries to decipher the difference between what one can see and what is actually there. Vasarely was perhaps the first modern artist to realize that Kinetic Art did not have to move. Instead, he created a series of paintings and sculptures that used geometrical effects to suggest the idea of motion within static forms. In Vega-Nor, he created a semi-spherical image that seems to protrude from a flat background. PROJECT Create a piece of Op art using a grid-based system to create and distort lines. Materials: • 9 x 12-inch drawing paper (2 per student) • Pencils • Rulers • Crayons or oil pastels • Glue stick • Something to trace circles with (a roll oftape, bowl or stencil) or a compass. Vocabulary: OpArt: Amajor development of painting in the 1960s that used geometric forms to create optical effects. Grid: A network of lines that cross each other to form a series of squares or rectangles. Warm Colors: Hues that give the feeling of warmth, such as red, orange, and yellow. These colors are often associated with fire, the sun, and heat. They can make an area feel closer and more intimate and create a sense of energy or excitement. Cool Colors: Include green, blue, and purple; are often more subdued than warm colors. They are the colors of night, water, nature and are usually calming, relaxing and somewhat reserved. Procedure: Step 1: Collect supplies. Step 2: On one piece of paper, use a ruler to divide the paper into a grid. Use the ruler to make 1-inch marks across the top and bottom of the paper. Connect the marks. Then make 1-inch marks along each side and connect those marks to make a grid. Step 3: Color the grid in using cool colors. (Note: If you know where you are going to place your circle in the next step, you may color lightly or omit coloring that area.) Step 4: Trace and cut out a circle from the second piece of paper. Step 5: Glue the circle onto the grid background. Step 6: Using the background grid as a guide, connect one side of the grid with the other using a curved line across the circle. Do 3 curved lines where the curve goes towards the top of the circle and 3 where they curve towards the bottom of the circle. Repeat wit

FAQs

What artistic techniques will students use to create Op Art?

Students use a grid-based system to divide paper, color with warm and cool colors, and draw curved lines that connect grid areas to create an optical illusion of depth and motion.

Which materials are required for the project?

The lesson lists 9 x 12-inch drawing paper, pencils, rulers, crayons or oil pastels, a glue stick, and tools to trace circles such as tape rolls, bowls, stencils, or a compass.

How do warm and cool colors contribute to the illusion?

Cool colors are applied to the grid background, while warm colors are placed on the circle and faded from bright centers to darker edges, strengthening the visual sense of depth.

Aug 20, 2026

Upload by Mason