Vintage Geometric Slate Gray With Charcoal Hand-Knotted Wool Rug Vasarely Rug By Victor Vasarely Capella-4 BB8196 5'9" × 5'10" $14,000

This exceptional vintage French rug, titled Capella-4, is a rare textile artwork by the famed Op Art pioneer Victor Vasarely. Created in the 1970s, the rug embodies Vasarely’s revolutionary approach to form and perception, translated into textile through meticulous craftsmanship.

The design features a mesmerizing optical illusion—a black elliptical orb appears to pulsate from the center of the composition, generated by an array of precisely calibrated black stripes over a cool gray background. The linear pattern echoes Vasarely’s fascination with visual distortion, movement, and mathematical precision.

Each stripe seems to morph and expand, creating the illusion of dimensionality and depth. The symmetrical, wave-like distortion of the stripes enhances the illusion of a three-dimensional object receding into or bulging from the flat plane—an effect Vasarely famously explored in his works across various media.

Victor Vasarely born April 9, 1908, Pécs, Hungary—died March 15, 1997, Paris, France. Hungarian-born French painter of geometric abstractions who became one of the leading figures of the Op art movement. Vasarely was trained as an artist in Budapest in the Bauhaus tradition. In 1930 he left Hungary and settled in Paris, where he initially supported himself as a commercial artist but continued to do his own work. During the 1930s he was influenced by Constructivism, but by the 1940s his characteristic style of painting animated surfaces of geometric forms and interacting colours had emerged. His style reached maturity in the mid-1950s and 1960s, when he began using brighter, more vibrant colours to further enhance the suggestion of movement through optical illusion.

A remarkable vintage rug, from Doris Leslie Blau Collection, features a timeless elegance. Doris Leslie Blau offers a broad and varied pricing spectrum, accommodating collectors and designers across a range of budgets—from modest vintage finds to rare, museum-worthy masterpieces.