DINN - C

Conceived initially in the early 1970s, and executed in 1988, Victor Vasarely’s Dinn-C is a lively tableau of bright, blocky colour and formal minimalism – yet beneath the disarming simplicity of its composition lies more complex, shifting undercurrents. Vasarely presents us with a vision of luminous brilliance, his colours almost popping out of the canvas; against a wash of serene blues, he juxtaposes simple tones of green, red, lilac, pink and orange to produce an effect of effortlessly charming radiance. Yet, in typical fashion, Vasarely’s virtuosic, electric use of colour emerges from a strict sense of order – each unit in the composition can be reduced to a square on the canvas’s 10x10 grid, with each square in turn made up four smaller ones. Indeed, the structure of Dinn-C feels particularly tightly organised: without the kinetic, illusionistic modulations of line that Vasarely is perhaps best known for, the composition lies flat on the plane of the canvas, emanating a stately stillness. Yet beneath his series of flat circles, squares and diamonds, motion does subtly begin, underpinning the work; in the rolling collocations of blues the forms begin to ripple and swim, and colours seem to tumble down the canvas in cascades implied only by Vasarely’s masterful manipulation of tone – the kinetic experience in the mind’s eye.