Claire Vasarely, an artistic journey in the shadow of her family

It is a tribute in the form of a revelation. Before becoming the meticulous administrator of the work of her husband, Victor, a world figure in art from the second half of the 20th ^century , Claire Vasarely (1909-1990) lived a creative life. Paintings in bright colors, scenes of life captured on the fly and in Indian ink in her native Budapest, teeming floral motifs for silks and textiles, Aubusson tapestries mixing geometric abstractions and figurative forms inspired by Hungarian folklore… An exhibition at the Vasarely Foundation in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) reveals the artistic activity of this woman who remained in the shadow of her husband. And allows us to perceive the influence on the latter's work.

"When I was a child, this aspect of my grandmother's life was never revealed. She gave up everything in 1959 to devote herself to her husband. A renunciation that I still can't explain," says Pierre, 64, the grandson of the Vasarelys. Committed to rehabilitating a work that he discovered after the death of his grandparents – she in 1990, he in 1997 – the current president of the Vasarely Foundation has entrusted Valérie Da Costa, professor of contemporary art at the University of Paris 8, with the curation of this retrospective in the form of a joyful resurrection.

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