Marina Apollonio: Beyond the Circle

Enshrining the legacy of one of Op art’s few female protagonists, whose scintillating spirals are some of the most recognizable images of the movement

Marina Apollonio (born 1940) was one of the main exponents of the international Op art and kinetic art movements. Her dizzying, scintillating works, almost always rendered in black and white, were made in several scales: from hanging canvases to expansive installations painted directly onto floors. Peggy Guggenheim met the artist in 1968 and bought one of her works, making Apollonio the last artist to enter this historic collection. Restoring Apollonio’s name to the pantheon of Op art pioneers, Beyond the Circle traces her career up to the present day. It highlights the rigor of her visual research, pursued with an elegance of execution and a wide range of variation: moving between painting, sculpture and drawing, between static, moving and environmental works, between black and white, chromatic research and experimentation with techniques and materials.