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Op Art

OP ART STYLE

The Op art movement emerged in the 1960s, mirroring the counterculture of the time in its embrace of visual trickery, graphic shapes and bright colors.

Spreading across Europe and the Americas, the style — whose name is short for “optical art” — influenced advertising, fashion and interior design before fading in the early ’70s.

Op art remained significant, however, for artists and scientists interested in the nature of perception. And today, it’s seeing a resurgence of interest from collectors and interior designers.

Op artists played with the principles of perception, manipulating line, shape, patterns and color to create the illusion of depth and movement. They drew on and evolved methods developed by past movements, from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism, to produce intense visual experiences.

All the Op artists shared a focus on the gap between what is and what we perceive. Each, however, had a distinct approach to the issue and a unique visual style.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of Op art that includes works by Josef Albers, Bridget Riley, Jesús Rafael Soto and more.

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Style: Op Art
Artist: Kyohei Inukai
Spiral, Screenprint by Kyohei Inukai
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Spiral Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Image Size: 21.5 x 25.5 inches Size: 23 x 2...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Target, Large Geometric Painting by Kyohei Inukai 1968
Located in Long Island City, NY
An large acrylic painting by Kyohei Inukai from 1968. An abstract optical image with contrasting blue and red hues. Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Target Yea...
Category

1960s Op Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Egg (Red)
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Egg (Red) Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Image Size: 25 x 20 inches Size: 35 x 23...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Egg 2 (Purple)
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Egg 2 (Purple) Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 5/45 Image Size: 20 x 26 inches Size:...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Blue Target
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Blue Target Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Image Size: 21.25 x 25 inches Size: 23...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Force Field (Purple), Screenprint by Kyohei Inukai
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Force Field (Purple) Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Image Size: 21 x 25 inches S...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Pulse
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Pulse Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 37/100 Image Size: 21.75 x 25.5 inches Size: 23...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Egg (Orange), Geometric Abstract Screenprint by Kyohei Inukai
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Egg (Orange) Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Image Size: 25 x 20 inches Size: 35 x...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Related Items
Untitled
Located in Ljubljana, SI
Original color silkscreen, 1998. Edition of 108 signed and numbered impressions on Arches paper. Sol LeWitt was a well-known American Conceptual and Minimal artist. He is famous for ...
Category

1990s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Untitled
H 37.41 in W 30.32 in
Yaacov Agam Large Silkscreen Colors on Gold Signed Israeli Kinetic Op Art Print
Located in Surfside, FL
This is a large hand signed serigraph silkscreen, pencil numbered in Roman numerals. biographical info: The son of a rabbi, Agam can trace his ancestry back six generations to the f...
Category

20th Century Op Art

Materials

Screen

"Zarch" Babe Shapiro, Optical Art, Hard-Edge Silver Hexagons Stripes Pattern
Located in New York, NY
Babe Shapiro Zarch, 1970 Signed, titled and dated on the stretcher Acrylic on canvas 30 x 22 inches Provenance: Private Collection, Long Island Babe Shapiro was born, in 1927 in Newark, New Jersey. He received his MFA from Hunter College where he studied under Robert Motherwell. His work was first recognized in 1958 by James Johnson Sweeney, director of the Guggenheim Museum at the time, who brought it to the attention of the Stable Gallery in New York City, where he was included in a group show, and where he had his first major solo show in 1962. His work has been exhibited widely in both solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, and is included in private collections, as well as in over 50 public and museum collections. Shapiro’s work is in the permanent collections of The Albright-Knox Gallery...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Untitled
Located in Palm Desert, CA
"Untitled" is an acrylic on canvas painting made by Richard Anuszkiewicz in 1970. The painting size is 48 x 96 inches. The framed size is 49 1/4 x 97 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches. The painting...
Category

Late 20th Century Op Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Gull Point
Located in San Francisco, CA
This artwork titled "Gull Point" 1987 is a color serigraph by noted American artist Roy Ahlgren, 1927-2011 It is hand signed, titled, dated and numbered 60/100 in pencil by the artis...
Category

Mid-20th Century Op Art

Materials

Screen

Gull Point
Gull Point
H 29.25 in W 22.25 in D 0.01 in
Roy Ahlgren "Concantenation" Signed Limited Edition Print Op-Art
Located in San Rafael, CA
Roy Ahlgren (American, 1927 - 2011) Concatenation, 1970 Silkscreen (Print), signed, titled and numbered in pencil Edition 31/100 Image Size: 18 x 18 inches Sheet 20.5 in H x 20 in L ...
Category

20th Century Op Art

Materials

Screen

Fiesta
Located in San Francisco, CA
This artwork titled "Fiesta" 1982 is a color serigraph on Wove paper by noted American artist Roy Ahlgren, 1927-2011 It is hand signed, titled, dated and numbered 66/130 in pencil by...
Category

Mid-20th Century Op Art

Materials

Screen

Fiesta
Fiesta
H 22.25 in W 29.75 in D 0.01 in
Agam Silkscreen Mod Judaica Lithograph Hand Signed Israeli Kinetic Op Art Print
Located in Surfside, FL
Yaacov Agam Israeli (b. 1928) Hand signed, not individually numbered but from edition of 180. I can include a copy of the title sheet with the edition size and his signature if you request. sheet: 13.5 X 13.5 inches Some of these works have beautiful Hebrew calligraphy and mod imagery, animals, children and such that are not usually found in his work. This is a masterpiece of bold, graphic, mod design. Along with Reuven Rubin and Menashe Kadishman he is among Israel's best known artists internationally. Biographical info: The son of a rabbi, Yaacov Agam can trace his ancestry back six generations to the founder of the Chabad movement in Judaism. in 1946, he entered the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Studying with Mordecai Ardon, a former student at the Weimar Bauhaus. Yaakov Agam has been associated h with “abstract” artists, “hard edge” artists, and artists such as Josef Albers and Max Bill. Others find in Agam’s work an indebtedness to the masters of the Bauhaus. Agam’s approach to art, being conceptual in nature, has been likened to Marcel Duchamp’s, who expressed the need to put art “at the service of the spirit.” And, because of Agam’s employment of color and motion in his art, he has been compared to Alexander Calder, the artist who put sculpture into motion. (Motion is not an end, but a means for Agam. Calder’s mobiles are structures that are fixed, revolving at the whim of the wind. In a work by Agam, the viewer must intervene.) Agam has also been classified as an “op art” artist because he excels in playing with our visual sensitivities. Agam went to Zurich to study with Johannes Itten at the Kunstgewerbeschule. There, he met Frank Lloyd Wright and Siegfried Giedion, whose ideas on the element of time in art and architecture impressed him. In 1955, Galerie Denise René hosted a major group exhibition in connection with Vasarely's painting experiments with movement. in addition to art by Vasarely, it included works by Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Soto and Jean Tinguely, among others. Most Americans were first introduced to Vasarely by the groundbreaking exhibition, "The Responsive Eye," at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1965. Josef Albers, Richard Anuszkiewicz. The show confirmed Vasarely's international reputation as the father of Op art. Agam has sought to express his ideas in a non-static form of art. In his abstract Kinetic works, which range from paintings and graphics to sculptural installations and building facades. Agam continually seeks to explore new possibilities in form and color and to involve the viewer in all aspects of the artistic process. Thus, for the past 40 years, Yaacov Agam’s pioneering ideas have impacted developments in art, (painting, monoprint, lithograph and agamograph) architecture, theatre, and public sculpture. Reflecting both his Israeli Jewish...
Category

1980s Op Art

Materials

Lithograph, Screen

Victor Vasarely Screen Print Abstract, Geometric Squares Cubes Hexagon
Located in Detroit, MI
Victor Vasarely born in 1906 was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op Art movement. Op Art is a form of abstract art that gives the illusion of movement by the precise use of pattern and color, or in which conflicting patterns emerge and overlap. Victor Vasarely and Brigit Riley are its most famous exponents. In its visual balancing act of color and movement from a flat plane to developed continuous flow “Untitled” is a complex arrangement of squares and colors that visually expand and contract. It is one of Vasarely’s most successful Op Art abstract works. The piece is signed on the lower right and number 20/150 on the lower left. The print is behind glass and matted. Vasarely was born in Pecs and grew up in Slovakia and Budapest, where in 1925, he took up medical studies. Abandoning medicine he turned to traditional academic painting at the private Podolini-Volkmann Academy. In 1928/1929, he enrolled at Sandor Bortnyik’s private art school widely recognized as Budapest's centre of Bauhaus studies. His studies concentrated on applied graphic art and typographical design. In 1929, he painted his Blue Study and Green Study. In 1930, he married his fellow student Claire Spinner (1908–1990). Together they had two sons, Andre and Jean-Pierre. Vasarely became a graphic designer and a poster artist during the 1930s combining patterns and organic images with each other. Vasarely utilized geometric shapes and colorful graphics, the artist created compelling illusions of spatial depth, as seen in his work Vega-Nor (1969). Vasarely’s method of painting borrowed from a range of influences, including Bauhaus design principles, Wassily Kandinsky, and Constructivism. In the late 1920s, Vasarely enrolled at the Muhely Academy in Budapest, where the syllabus was largely based on Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus school in Germany. After settling in Paris in 1930, Vasarely worked in advertising agencies to support himself as a graphic artist while creating many works including Zebra (1937), which is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op Art. The artist experimented in a style based in Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s, before arriving at his hallmark checkerboard...
Category

Mid-20th Century Op Art

Materials

Paper, Screen

B-139
Located in Palm Desert, CA
A painting by Tadasky (Tadasuke) Kuwayama. "B-139" is an abstract painting executed in circles of red, blue and yellow by Op Artist Tadasky (Tadasuke) Kuwayama. Signed, verso, "Tadas...
Category

1960s Op Art

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Oscillation
Located in Fairlawn, OH
11 color screen print Signed, dated, titled and numberedin pencil Edition: 150 (9/150) Provenance: Estate of the Artist By Decent
Category

1980s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Chiapas I
Located in Ljubljana, SI
Chiapas I. Original color silkscreen, cca. 1970. Edition of 70 signed and numbered impressions on Arches paper. Marko Spalatin was a modern and contemporary artist from Croatia, who ...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Previously Available Items
Pulse
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Pulse Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 100 Image Size: 21.75 x 25.5 inches Size: 23 x ...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Egg II (Red)
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Egg II (Red) Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Image Size: 20 x 26.5 inches Size: 23...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Force Field (Purple)
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Force Field (Purple) Year: circa 1970 Medium: Serigraph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: 50 Image Size: 21 x 25 inches Si...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Whisper
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: Kyohei Inukai, American (1913 - 1985) Title: Whisper Year: circa 1970 Medium: Silkscreen, signed and numbered in pencil Edition: AP Image Size: 21 x 25 inches Size: 23 ...
Category

1970s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Whisper
Whisper
H 23 in W 30 in
Life Forces
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
An original signed silkscreen by Japanese-American artist Kyohei Inukai, (1913-1985) titled, "Life Forces", 1980. This is hand pencil signed and numbered by Kyohei Inukai: 178/250. S...
Category

1980s Op Art

Materials

Screen

Op Art art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Op art available for sale on 1stDibs. Works in this style were very popular during the 21st Century and Contemporary, but contemporary artists have continued to produce works inspired by this movement. If you’re looking to add art created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, purple, orange, red and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Victor Vasarely, Roy Ahlgren, Victor Debach, and Yaacov Agam. Frequently made by artists working with Screen Print, and Paint and other materials, all of these pieces for sale are unique and have attracted attention over the years. Not every interior allows for large Op Art, so small editions measuring 2 inches across are also available. Prices for art made by famous or emerging artists can differ depending on medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $66 and tops out at $350,000, while the average work sells for $1,616.

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