Erika Deák Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of its autumn season with István Felsmann’s exhibition, Verve. As its title suggests, the exhibition evokes the pages of a Parisian modernist art magazine. Verve was published between 1937 and 1960 in a total of 38 issues, edited by Efstratios Eleftheriades (1889–1983), better known as Tériade. Each issue featured original lithographs by some of the most significant artists of the 20th century, while also publishing texts by renowned writers such as Ernest Hemingway, André Malraux, or Albert Camus.
Tériade emphasized aesthetic continuity, devoting entire issues to the reinterpretation of medieval manuscripts, codices, and iconographies. His interest focused on the artistic and aesthetic imagination of the Middle Ages, which he approached not in a documentary way, but empirically—starting from the visual experience. On the magazine’s pages, the two eras—medieval and modernism—appeared side by side, transcending space and time, as examples of an ongoing artistic dialogue. A fine example of this is the Verve adaptation (1949) of René d’Anjou’s 15th-century work Livre du cœur d’amour épris (The Book of the Love-Stricken Heart), published with a cover designed by Henri Matisse and commentary by André Chamson.
It was precisely this adaptation that inspired István Felsmann’s new line of works exhibited in the gallery. The Book of the Love-Stricken Heart tells an allegorical tale of love, in which poetic symbols—such as the heart, desire, grace, hope, jealousy, and sorrow—appear as personifications and, through various adventures, lead to the ideal of love. The manuscript’s miniatures, rich in effects of light and shadow, were painted by Barthélemy d’Eyck (1420–1470), court painter to René d’Anjou. In some cases, these meticulously crafted miniatures already foreshadowed the Renaissance’s use of perspective and compositional innovations. Henri Matisse’s iconic 1949 cover depicting a red heart created a kind of bridge between medieval and modern art.
István Felsmann aligns with Tériade’s creative concept by blending contemporary art with the legacy of the past, moving freely between artistic periods and mediums to create a kind of intellectual unity. The exhibition takes its formal and theoretical framework from the 1949 Verve special issue. Felsmann fuses the sacrality and craftsmanship of Renaissance masters with the experimental, exploratory spirit of the modernists. He evokes the art of Picasso, Matisse, Dürer, Delacroix, Rubens, and Rembrandt, as well as diverse artistic directions, including Mannerism, Cubism, geometric abstraction, and even the genre of caricature.
István Felsmann is one of the distinctive voices of the young generation that emerged in the 2010s. He first drew attention with his panel works built from LEGO, infused with conceptual humor and reflections on the philosophy of art, transforming the raw material of a children’s toy into artworks. In his deeply engaged creative process, material diversity and the interplay between different artistic genres play a central role. Alongside painting, he also works in sculpture and printmaking, and creates installations and videos.