Victor Vasarely (9 April 1906 – 15 March 1997), was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a grandfather and leader of the Op art movement.

In 1928, he enrolled at Sándor Bortnyik’s private art school called Műhely, then widely recognized as Budapest’s center of Bauhaus studies. In Budapest, he worked for a ball bearings company in accounting and designing advertising posters. Vasarely became a graphic designer and a poster artist during the 1930s combining patterns and organic images with each other.

Vasarely eventually went on to produce art and sculpture using optical illusion. Over the next three decades, Vasarely developed his style of geometric abstract art, working with various materials but using a minimal number of forms and colors. His work entitled Zebra, created in the 1930s is considered by some to be the earliest example of Op art.