The 1960s saw many significant events including the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, the rise of British pop/rock music, and the first man in space. The 1960s also saw the emergence of Op Art, an abstract art movement pioneered by Victor Vasarely that used optical illusions. His 1938 painting "Zebra" helped form the movement. A pivotal 1965 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called "The Responsive Eye" featured Op Art and brought it widespread attention. Meanwhile, artists like Bridget Riley and Julian Stanczak were among the pioneers of the style. Stanczak's early experiences in concentration camps and refugee camps during World War II influenced his precise geometric style despite

1. The 1960s

2. Events
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•
•
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Assassination of President Kennedy (1963)
British pop/rock music
First man in space(1961)
Woodstock(1969)

3. Op art
• Victor Vasarely began this movement with his
1938 painting ‘zebra’
• Abstract and Expressionist movements helped
form op art due deconstructing subject matters.
• Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, Marina Apollonio,
Richard Anuskiewitz and Julian Stanczakwere the
first Opital artists.
• In 1964 ‘Time magazine’ gave it the name‘op art’.
After reviewing the responsive eye exhibition.

4. ZEBRA
ZEBRA
‘ZEBRA’

5. THE RESPONSIVE
• In 1965 William. C. Seitz held an
exhibition at the museum of modern art
in New york city
• It focused on perceptual aspects of art
which result of illusion of movement and
the interaction of colour relationships.

6. The critics hated it.

7. The public loved it.

8. • After the Responsive eye exhibition
the public was fascinated with
optical art.
• Advertisements began to use it.
They took inspiration Riley’s
and
Vasarely’s
compositiona
l styles.
Riley tried to
sue one
fashion industry for printing her
work on dresses. 

9. Julian Stanczak
• Born in Poland in 1928.
• In 1940 he was taken to a
concentration camp in Siberia.
• There he lost the use of his right
arm (which he drawn with.) He was only 10.
• AT JUST 13 HE ESCAPED. He made it to Persia and joined a resistance
army. Then to a refugee camp in Uganda.
• At 21 he made it to America with an idea in his head of the ‘American
dream’. There he made it to a shelter and was fed. The American dream
was to him. ‘The feeling of being full’
• In the 50s he attended Yale.
• But was his art influenced by his personal experience…..?

10. NO!
• “Everybody was trying to push me to paint
from my experience. Why do you drown in the
misery of your problems? Who cares if you
suffer? Everyone suffers!”
• HOWEVER. The lost of his arm caused him to
be careful with geometry. Any precision
requires tape to create guides before paint
was applied.

11. Obsession (1960’s)

12. Vetical succession (1990’s)

13. Structural (1960’s)

14. QUOTES
“I was trying to understand how I see- how
we see altogether.”
“Any line creates energy”
“I’m not painting for myself. I’m painting
for curiosity.”
“I didn’t know I was making art.”

15. School of London
• The term ‘School of London’ was first coined by
R.B. Kitaj in 1976 in his cataloge introduction to
the exhibition ‘the human clay
•
‘A collection of individual artists who
knew each other, working in london,at the same
time in the figurative style during the doom years
of abstract painting’

16. Francis Bacon
• Bacon was the inspiration and trend-setter of
‘school of London’, his success’ spurred the
others to do better and be stronger artists.
• Despite seeming disturbed through his
painting, bacon had quite an eventful life
spending his middle ages eating and drinking
in London’s ‘Soho’

17. • The screaming scene from sergiEisenteins ‘the
battleship potemkin’ was a huge inspiration in
bacons work, as one art critic, Michael
Peppiattsaid ‘If one could really explain the
origin of this scream, one would be far closer
to understanding Bacons whole art’.
• He also preferred to paint on the un-primed
side of the canvas.

18. Studio

20. Lucian Freud
• ‘I paint people, not because of what they are like,
not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how
they happen to be’
• Intimate friend of Bacon, Freud benefited most
from his guide.
• German born British painter.
• Often explored the relationship between model
and artist to an uncomfortable degree.

22. In his later years, Freud took up
a more illustrative style, with
out of scale facial features and
muted colours, painted with
tiny sable brushes and evoke
early Neatherlandish painting.