Prints by Victor Vasarely will be featured in an exhibition opening Sunday at the Butler Institute of American Art.

Vasarely (1906-1997) was born in Hungary and is considered one of the first practitioners of Op Art, abstract art where optical effects occur in a viewer’s personal perception.

He briefly studied medicine at the University of Budapest from 1925-27, but he left to pursue art for two years and then enrolled at the Muhely Academy in Budapest, which is often referred to as the “Hungarian Bauhaus.”

Vasarely relocated in 1930 to Paris, where he worked as a graphic designer for various advertising agencies. In 1944 he had his first solo exhibition

He began his experiments in Op Art in the early 1950s. During the same period, he adapted his abstract visual vocabulary to architecture by completing a series of murals for the University of Caracas in Venezuela.

Continuing with experimentations he became an overnight sensation in the United States in 1965. when his work was included in the landmark Op Art exhibition “The Responsive Eye” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

As a result of the exhibition’s popularity, Vasarely’s art became widely celebrated, and he experienced enormous success as a printmaker.

There is a museum devoted to Vasarely’s work in his native Hungary, and his paintings can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Gallery in London and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

“Good Vibrations: The Prints of Victor Vasarely” runs through July 20 in the Segall Print Gallery at Butler North, 530 Wick Ave., Youngstown. The exhibition was organized by Carole Sorell Inc., sponsored by the Park West Foundation and curated by David S. Rubin.