Victor Vasarely (1906, Pecs – 1997, Paris) was a French author of Hungarian origin, proclaimed as the originator of Op-art.

His real name is Vásárhelyi Győző. In 1925, Vasarely started medical studies at Eötvös Loránd University. In 1927, he abandoned medicine and began with traditional academic painting at the private Podolini-Volkmann Academy. In 1928/1929, he enrolled at Sándor Bortnyik's private art school called Műhely, Budapest's centre of Bauhaus studies.

Vasarely left Hungary and settled in Paris in 1930 where he worked as a graphic artist. Vasarely created paintings and sculpture using optical illusion and created geometric abstract art. Vasarely's work Zebra, 1937, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op-art. In the 1950s Vasarely moved into Kinetic art, and in 1955 he wrote Manifeste jaune for a significant exhibition of Kinetic art, Le mouvement at the Galerie Denise René in Paris. He definitively became a central figure of Op-art following the 1970 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

His connection to the Zagreb art scene comes from Josip Vaništa and the Gorgona group, for whom Vasarely contributed to the fourth issue of the Gorgona anti-magazine. Vasarely's edition of the anti-magazine features two of his silk-screen prints and a text on abstract art, printed in 250 copies in French and Croatian language. In 1965, he created an issue of Ivan Picelj's publication a. Vasarely was a participant of Tendencies 5 (Constructive Visual Research, Computer Visual Research, Conceptual Art) in 1973, the fifth edition of the New Tendencies movement's exhibitions, started in 1961 by Almir Mavignier, and Zagreb-based theorists and Gorgona group members Matko Meštrović and Radoslav Putar.