The description of an artist’s exhibition as an oasis adrift in a sea of visual garbage is usually knee-jerk hyperbole and should be taken with a grain of salt. But in the case of Elaine Lustig Cohen’s work, there is some truth to this statement. Her art becomes intimate instantly, holding the viewer captive, producing the feeling that each piece of work is the only thing that matters at that very moment.

This is a very difficult thing to pull off, especially considering Ms. Cohen’s work eschews the look-at-me pyrotechnics used by many contemporary artists, and favors instead a vocabulary rooted in European modernism. To see how this is possible, just visit the two-venue retrospective of her work, “The Geometry of Seeing: The Art of Elaine Lustig Cohen 1966–2007,” now on view in Chelsea.

For the past five decades, Ms. Cohen has been a busy figure in the art world. In the 1950s — in collaboration with her first husband, famed designer Alvin Lustig, who died in 1955 — and throughout the 1960s, she was a highly successful and influential graphic designer, working for clients like Philip Johnson. In the late ’60s, growing tired of commercial design, she took up painting, and in 1979, became the first woman to have a solo exhibition at the Mary Boone Gallery in SoHo. In 1972, with her second husband, publisher Arthur Cohen, she founded the bookstore and gallery, Ex Libris, which she maintained after his death until 1998.

Ms. Cohen would never consider these as separate careers, but a type of gesamtkunstwerk, a unification of the arts into a harmonized artistic practice and way of life. Her photo-based collages, such as “Why Not” (1990) and “Menschilichen Proportion” (1994), display an understanding of how finely calibrated movements and pressures not only function formally, but are able to translate into a narrative full of wit and panache — a lesson most likely learned through her years in graphic design. Her precision is so well-tuned, in fact, the experience of these works becomes a virtual endless game of pinball for the eyes.

In “Menschilichen Proportion,” words cascade out of one corner of the picture into a silhouetted figure’s outstretched hand, only to reappear stiffened up as a faux column rising out of a swirl of stylized foliage, which is supporting the arm of a nude woman whose leg is trapped in a cage-like instrument. In the near distance, Eve is provoking Adam with a bit of citrus. Similarly, Ms. Cohen’s subdued but wacky “Impossible Machines” collages and critter-like “Sewing Box” (1983) resemble the onething-leads-to-another contraption fantasies of cult writer Raymond Roussel.

Ms. Cohen’s affinity for typography and works created on and out of paper is seen in both the early series of torn poster collages — such as “Unidad” (1979), “Granada” (1980), and “La Filiate” (1980) — and in her invented alphabet series — such as “Homage to Malevich” (2006). In the first group of work, she displays her ability to deftly corral the energy and potential chaos of ripped paper into elegantly composed abstractions. In the second group, she flips this situation around by jazzing up highly controlled, Bauhaus-inflected compositions until they seem ready to burst. In either case, the textual elements have been drained of their intended use, becoming in Ms. Cohen’s hands bits of purely visual information.

The ease with which Ms. Cohen traverses genres is evident in her “Box of Minutes” (1981) and “Color Box” (1987). These boxes — resembling the offspring of Anne Truitt and Ilya Bolotowsky — feel monolithic despite their small scale, and meld her ideas of design with modernist sculpture. But playfulness is still ever-present. For despite their cool, formal exteriors, it is the unknown myriad possibilities of what could be on the inside that rouse the imagination.

Though the astute eye will discern curatorial differences between her work at Pavel Zoubok Gallery and Julie Saul Gallery, there is really no conceptual distinction or aesthetic statement in play. In truth, this two-part retrospective is being held as much to acknowledge the place of Ms. Cohen’s work in the history of contemporary art, as it is to commemorate her 80th birthday and a life devoted to the arts. But don’t be fooled by her age, for the full-steam-ahead aplomb of Ms. Cohen’s recent works discloses a sharp eye and an even sharper mind.

At Pavel Zoubok Gallery through December 15 (533 W. 23rd St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-675-7490);

At Julie Saul Gallery through January 12 (535 W. 22nd St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-627-2410).