In the 1960s art world, illusion was a dirty word. The old tradition of a painting as a window onto imaginary realities seemed beyond exhausted — just more proof of painting’s death. Abstract painting was tolerated, especially if big and flatly painted so that it was undeniably an object. Magic and poetry were banished. “What you see is what you see,” said the young Frank Stella, the moment’s dominant painter .

Even before pocketing her M.F.A. in 196 5, Vija Celmins refused to accept such formalist tyranny. Painting wasn’t dead to her and bigness and abstractness were not de rigueur. Ms. Celmins (pronounced VEE-ya SELL-mins) emerged from the University of California in Los Angeles art program determined to be in step with her time yet go her own way.

Now in its sixth decade, the artist’s way has been lavishly retraced in “Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory,” a quietly ravishing, brilliantly installed (if slightly too big) exhibition of 114 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures at the Met Breuer. Let the magic begin.

“I thought I would sit down without all my theories and aesthetics,” the 80-year-old artist has recalled, quoted in a text in the show’s first gallery. “I was going to start in a more humble place with just my eyes and my hand.”