Almir Da Silva Mavignier Brazilian, 1925-2018

Optical, Concrete artist, based on mathematical and geometric principles, Almir Da Silva Mavignier (b. 1925 Rio de Janiero, lives and works in Hamburg, Germany) explores the interplay between form and colour and the illusory effects created on the viewer.  ‘Permutations’, a technique of using a series of geometrically ordered points constituting a pattern by means of an optical combination of color making the surface vibrate was developed which consist in infinite variants of chromatic relationships. 

Mavignier started studying painting in Rio de Janeiro in 1945, quickly turning to abstraction and joining the first group of abstract painters in Brazil. After a brief stay in Paris, he moved to Germany in 1953 where he studied at the Ulm School of Design as a pupil of Max Bill and Joseph Albers.

In 1958 he began collaborating with the Group ZERO, exhibiting in the same year at the ZERO show in Düsseldorf, and later with the Dutch Nul Group at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1962. He organised and designed the first international show of Op art in Zagreb in 1960; New Tendencies. In 1965 he took part in the seminal MoMA exhibition The Responsive Eye.

In 1994, the artist had his work shown at the Biennial Brazil 20th Century exhibition. In 2000, the scholar Aracy Amaral hosted an exhibition to celebrate the artist's 75th birthday at the MAM, São Paulo. Mavignier became a German citizen in 1981 and he teaches at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Hamburg.