Victor Vasarely (1908 – 1997) was born in Hungary. He moved to Paris in 1931, where he quickly gained a name as a bold, promising artist. In 1955, he set out the founding principles of kinetic art in his famous Manifeste Jaune (Yellow Manifest). Centered on the esthetics of motion, this artistic trend exercised great influence in the second half of the 20^th century.

From the end of the 1940s, Vasarely stood apart from his contemporaries through his efforts to renew the fundamentals of abstract art from the inside. He believed that this art form was too strongly marked by a stiff figurative approach. His views on abstract art led him to make radical choices.

In pursuit of “the internal geometry of nature”, he used – and overused – black and white and emphasized fracture lines. The onlooker’s gaze is lost in optical illusions and a mass of unstable shapes and colors.

To modernize its image, Renault asked Vasarely to design its new logo in 1972. Vasarely had already worked in the advertising world and he placed his graphic talents at the service of the brand. The transformed logo maintained the diamond shape but gained cleaner, more dynamic and angular lines. A seventies design that has since been revised to reflect the new more rounded lines of the brand’s styling cues.