Jeroen Brouwer
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"Wow: The black and white chess pieces are actually the same color. A great example of the fact that we don't directly perceive the color of objects; our perceptual systems make an educated "guess" based on the objects' surroundings."
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03271
Image segmentation and lightness perception - Nature
The perception of lightness, or surface albedo, is a hotly debated aspect of visual awareness. The amount of light reaching our eyes is a combination of the light striking an object, the light it reflects (the albedo), and the effects of intervening media. The controversy is about whether the brain represents these different factors explicitly as a set of overlapping layers when it computes surface albedo. The cover image, a variant of the largest lightness illusion so far developed, demonstrates the dramatic role that layered image representations can play in the perception of lightness. It is hard to believe, but the texture within the figures of the two opposed images is the same: it is context that makes one appear black, the other white. For a more striking rendition of this illusion, see the online QuickTime movies in Supplementary Information.