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Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

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
Near and Far Acuity, Mid Century Modern Op Art painting from historic exhibition
Located in New York, NY
Richard Anuszkiewicz Near and Far Acuity, 1957 Gouache and watercolor painting Hand signed and dated 1957 by Richard Anuszkiewicz on the right front Frame included Anuszkiewicz' artworks from the late 1950s are rarely found on the market. This historic painting is one of the works that helped launch the artist's career. It was done in 1957 - the year the artist arrived in New York. Near and Far Acuity has been removed from its original frame, and re-framed in an elegant wood frame with conservation materials and UV plexiglass. The original gallery label from The Contemporaries has been preserved and affixed to the new backing, and the collector who acquires this work will also be provided with a copy of the original receipt - signed by Karl Lunde (director of the Contemporaries and author of a major monograph on the artist). Measurements: Frame: 32 x 28 x 2 inches Artwork: 21 x 25 inches This work was first exhibited in the groundbreaking, and career-making 1960 exhibition at The Contemporaries gallery (New York, February 29, 1960 - March 19, 1960) and was featured in the exhibition catalogue, shown in the images here. In his essay entitled "Richard Anuszkiewicz: Color Precisionist" by art historian John T. Spike, he writes, "In the spring of '57, Richard Anuszkiewicz left Ohio for good. "I was ready. I came to New York with a substantial amount of work. I was ready to go around to the galleries and I was prepared because I really had something. I had an idea. I had a series of paintings that showed this idea and I felt good about it and I felt now that's the only place for me to be." A friend helped him get a job touching up the plaster models of classical temples and statues in the Junior Museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He took off six months the next year to travel around Europe in a Volkswagen, also seeing some places in North Africa. "When I came back, I remember taking my work around to the galleries and receiving interesting comments — positive comments from the various people. But Abstract Expressionism was very popular. My things were very hard-edged, very strong in color — a use of color that nobody was using. Everybody would say. 'Oh, they are nice, but so hard to look at. They hurt my eyes". Leo Castelli considered him seriously but the gallery was developing a specialization in pop artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. "I can remember going to Martha Jackson and having her look at the work and she would put her hands straight out in front of her and block out parts of the painting with her hand and she'd say, mmm no rest areas." He finally caught on with The Contemporaries Gallery in the fall of 1959. The gallery at 992 Madison Avenue mainly represented new European talent. Karl Lunde, the gallery director, saw some of his canvases hanging...
Category

1950s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Watercolor, Gouache, Mixed Media

Brutalist Op Art Abstract Charcoal Drawing by Dordevic Miodrag
Located in Atlanta, GA
Serbian artist Dordevic (or Djordjevic) Miodrag (1936 -), known as "Miodrag," designed this stunning abstract drawing. This work is a charcoal on paper depicting a brutalist abstract...
Category

1960s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Charcoal

Agam Original Marker Drawing Colorful Spirals Hand Signed Israeli Kinetic Op Art
Located in Surfside, FL
Yaacov Agam, Israeli (b. 1928) Hand signed and dated This is a great example of bold, graphic, mod design. Along with Reuven Rubin and Menashe Kadishman he is among Israel's best kn...
Category

1990s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Archival Paper, Permanent Marker

Geometric Color Grid - Op Art Composition
Located in Soquel, CA
Highly precise op-art composition by an unknown artist. A grid of colored squares has been created with various colors, divided by occasional diagonal lines that give the feel of ove...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Watercolor

"Staircases Falling Out, " Adrianne Wortzel, Blue and Gold Abstract Op Art
Located in New York, NY
Adrianne Wortzel (American, b. 1941) Staircases Falling Out, 1987 Acrylic on paper 22 x 30 inches Signed and titled on the reverse Provenance: Webb & Parsons, New Canaan, Connecticu...
Category

1980s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Acrylic

Infinity #54 (op art curvy monochrome red pen drawing wood detailed oriental)
Located in Quebec, Quebec
Cheoluy Kim’s practice examines the blurred frontier between perceived reality and fantasy. His work is informed by a childhood growing up on the border of North and South Korea in Gosung. There, he grew fascinated by all the fauna and flora he observed from his village surrounded by mountains, as well as the air balloons carrying political propaganda. He witnessed everything in the sky. This instilled a deeply rooted reflex to imagine a fantastical world beyond the physical frontiers he was bound by. Cheolyu Kim studied and obtained his master in sculpture, although, his current practice is entirely devoted to pen drawing on either paper or wood. Either bicolored or monochrome, the artist's typically limited chromatic palette gives room for an intense focus on detailed compositions, tonal gradients, and multiple perspectives. Kim’s background in sculpture is evident in the carved-like volumes of the elements in his drawings. Fine moire and cross-hatching are used for textures and shading in the drawn sections while the paper or wood is left fully exposed in other areas. Imaginary fauna and flora abound which contributes to a rather biomorphic aura to his work. All the while, indigenous, modern and futuristic architectural structures are erected and confuse any sense of fixed temporality. Rather, it projects us into a phantasmagorical universe where past, present and future collapse into one. Some perspectives are even skewed disrupting our contemplation. Totemic poles, origami-shaped creatures, and aquatic vegetation coexist fluidly in Kim’s oniric visions. His fine-detailed patterned dreamscapes engage the viewer actively; we are called upon to discover how do all the various entities interact over the multiple receding planes building up to Cheolyu's surrealist ecosystems. keywords; wood, pencil, rings, circles, moire, highly detailed, geometric abstraction, intentionally exposed support, line form and color, monochrome, curvilinear forms, Korean art, dynamism, contemporary minimalism, graphism, repetition, engaged with traditional Korean art...
Category

2010s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Birch, Wood Panel, Pen

Oscar Reutersvard Original Op Art Pen, Ink & Watercolor Drawing C.1990
Located in San Francisco, CA
Oscar Reutersvard Original Op Art Pen, Ink & Watercolor Drawing C.1990 Dimensions 8" wide x 11" high Housed in a simple frame - Dimensions 15" wide...
Category

Late 20th Century Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Ink, Watercolor

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 Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Screen

Untitled VI, Acrylic Painting on Paper by David Roth
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: David Roth, American (1942 - ) Title: Untitled VI Year: 1974 Medium: Acrylic Painting on Arches Paper, signed and dated Image Size: 15.5 x 45.5 inches Size: 22.5 in. x 53.5 i...
Category

1970s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

David Roth, Abstract Drawing, 1977
Located in Long Island City, NY
This colored pencil drawing was created by American artist David Roth. Roth's images are proportioned according to a strict mathematical formula - the pictures are composed according...
Category

1970s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Paper, Color Pencil

Infinity #53 (monochrome red pen drawing wood detailed oriental dansaekhwa)
Located in Quebec, Quebec
Cheoluy Kim’s practice examines the blurred frontier between perceived reality and fantasy. His work is informed by a childhood growing up on the border of North and South Korea in Gosung. There, he grew fascinated by all the fauna and flora he observed from his village surrounded by mountains, as well as the air balloons carrying political propaganda. He witnessed everything in the sky. This instilled a deeply rooted reflex to imagine a fantastical world beyond the physical frontiers he was bound by. Cheolyu Kim studied and obtained his master in sculpture, although, his current practice is entirely devoted to pen drawing on either paper or wood. Either bicolored or monochrome, the artist's typically limited chromatic palette gives room for an intense focus on detailed compositions, tonal gradients, and multiple perspectives. Kim’s background in sculpture is evident in the carved-like volumes of the elements in his drawings. Fine moire and cross-hatching are used for textures and shading in the drawn sections while the paper or wood is left fully exposed in other areas. Imaginary fauna and flora abound which contributes to a rather biomorphic aura to his work. All the while, indigenous, modern and futuristic architectural structures are erected and confuse any sense of fixed temporality. Rather, it projects us into a phantasmagorical universe where past, present and future collapse into one. Some perspectives are even skewed disrupting our contemplation. Totemic poles, origami-shaped creatures, and aquatic vegetation coexist fluidly in Kim’s oniric visions. His fine-detailed patterned dreamscapes engage the viewer actively; we are called upon to discover how do all the various entities interact over the multiple receding planes building up to Cheolyu's surrealist ecosystems. keywords; wood, pencil, rings, circles, moire, highly detailed, geometric abstraction, intentionally exposed support, line form and color, monochrome, curvilinear forms, Korean art, dynamism, contemporary minimalism, graphism, repetition, engaged with traditional Korean art...
Category

2010s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Pen, Birch, Wood Panel

Walking table #47 (monochrome grey pen drawing wood detailed oriental dansaekhwa
Located in Quebec, Quebec
Cheoluy Kim’s practice examines the blurred frontier between perceived reality and fantasy. His work is informed by a childhood growing up on the border of North and South Korea in Gosung. There, he grew fascinated by all the fauna and flora he observed from his village surrounded by mountains, as well as the air balloons carrying political propaganda. He witnessed everything in the sky. This instilled a deeply rooted reflex to imagine a fantastical world beyond the physical frontiers he was bound by. Cheolyu Kim studied and obtained his master in sculpture, although, his current practice is entirely devoted to pen drawing on either paper or wood. Either bicolored or monochrome, the artist's typically limited chromatic palette gives room for an intense focus on detailed compositions, tonal gradients, and multiple perspectives. Kim’s background in sculpture is evident in the carved-like volumes of the elements in his drawings. Fine moire and cross-hatching are used for textures and shading in the drawn sections while the paper or wood is left fully exposed in other areas. Imaginary fauna and flora abound which contributes to a rather biomorphic aura to his work. All the while, indigenous, modern and futuristic architectural structures are erected and confuse any sense of fixed temporality. Rather, it projects us into a phantasmagorical universe where past, present and future collapse into one. Some perspectives are even skewed disrupting our contemplation. Totemic poles, origami-shaped creatures, and aquatic vegetation coexist fluidly in Kim’s oniric visions. His fine-detailed patterned dreamscapes engage the viewer actively; we are called upon to discover how do all the various entities interact over the multiple receding planes building up to Cheolyu's surrealist ecosystems. keywords; wood, pencil, rings, circles, moire, highly detailed, geometric abstraction, intentionally exposed support, line form and color, monochrome, curvilinear forms, Korean art, dynamism, contemporary minimalism, graphism, repetition, engaged with traditional Korean art...
Category

2010s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Birch, Wood Panel, Pen

Untitled
By John Kalymnios
Located in White Plains, NY
'Untitled' by John Kalymnios, 1999. Pantone ink on paper, 78.5 x 51.25 in. (framed). This geometric op art drawing features bands of concentric circles with the full spectrum colors ...
Category

1990s Op Art Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Materials

Ink, Archival Paper

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Op Art drawings and watercolor paintings for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Op Art drawings and watercolor paintings 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 drawings and watercolor paintings created in this style to introduce contrast in an otherwise neutral space in your home, the works available on 1stDibs include elements of blue, pink and other colors. Many Pop art paintings were created by popular artists on 1stDibs, including Cheolyu Kim, David Roth, Roy Ahlgren, and John Kalymnios. Frequently made by artists working with Paint, and Paper 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 drawings and watercolor paintings, so small editions measuring 11.25 inches across are also available. Prices for drawings and watercolor paintings 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 $450 and tops out at $35,000, while the average work sells for $2,000.

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