The History of the JPM Vasarely Museum

Located on Káptalan Street in Pécs – often referred to as “Museum Street” – the JPM Vasarely Museum in Pécs is one of the most visited fine art exhibitions of the Janus Pannonius Museum. It opened its doors on 4 June 1976 in a listed historic building that formerly served as a canon’s house.

The collection is based entirely on donations by the artist. The process of building the relationship between the Janus Pannonius Museum and Victor Vasarely began as early as 1966. In 1969, Vasarely donated 42 serigraphs to the museum, followed in 1974 by a further major donation – including paintings, tapestries, sculptures, multiples, and serigraphs – which laid the foundation for the permanent exhibition.

In addition to 364 works by Victor Vasarely himself, the collection also includes a substantial body of works by his wife, the fine artist Claire Vasarely (Klára Spinner), as well as works by their son, Jean-Pierre Vasarely, who became known under the artist name Yvaral. Beyond his own and his wife’s works, Vasarely also made available to the museum an international selection of works by his contemporaries – key figures of 20th-century abstract art – with the intention of presenting the international artistic context of his oeuvre to visitors in Pécs.

The JPM Vasarely Museum in Pécs is regarded as Hungary’s first permanent public collection exhibition devoted entirely to the art of geometric abstraction. Although abstract – occasionally geometric – works had previously appeared in Hungarian public collections, they had never formed an independent, permanent exhibition focused exclusively on this movement. The establishment of the JPM Vasarely Museum therefore represents a pioneering achievement in Hungarian institutional history and, in an international context, an early and rare example of a permanent museum presentation representing a complete oeuvre of geometric abstraction. Its opening, and the collaboration with Victor Vasarely, created a breach in the “cultural Iron Curtain” that had long separated Hungary from Western artistic movements, and became a defining element of Pécs’s city image, built on cultural openness and contemporaneity.

Since 1976, both the content and the structure of the permanent exhibition at the JPM Vasarely Museum have undergone several changes. In the new exhibition opening on 9 April 2026, marking the 120th anniversary of the artist’s birth, the most valuable works from the international collection will once again be on view after a long absence.