Vasa Mihich
Title: Rectangular Column #639
Medium: Laminated Acrylic. 1980
Location:

Vasa Mihich – better known simply as Vasa – is one of the artists associated with the California Light & Space movement of the 1960s. Another artist associated with the movement, Peter Alexander, also has works in the Luskin Art Collection.

Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Vasa arrived in Los Angeles in 1960 and at the time worked primarily as a painter. He came to the United States because he was excited about abstract expressionism, a movement that was concerned with emotional expression and the spontaneous act of creation. Instead of abstract expressionism, he discovered minimalism, which was often geometric, involved color fields, used industrial materials like acrylic, turned away from painting towards sculpture and was stripped of emotion.

Vasa’s sculptures explore optics and perception and the behavior and properties of light. He often sandwiches a thin slice of colored acrylic inside clear acrylic blocks, spheres, cubes and other geometric forms creating optical illusions involving color. Often the color of a piece may be read as solid color, but actually isn’t. Reflections also play a part in the perception of his works. However you perceive what’s going on, his unique understanding of light, color and material makes the experience of his work one of pure visual pleasure.