Two painters, members of two generations, for whom the houses of Budapest are silent witnesses to the past, World War II, the Holocaust, and 1956. The two painters independently discovered the theme of “houses.” Wellisch was captivated by the exterior appearance of the houses — the facades of Budapest, the architectural sculptures, caryatids, atlases, and masks that appear on them. while Gergely Kósa was captivated by the interior of a certain house — the suspended corridors, the hallways, the tiles, and the railings.
Judit Wellisch Tehel was born in Budapest in 1931. As a little girl, she survived the horrors of the Holocaust, and as a young woman and recent graduate, she lived through the 1956 revolution and its suppression. In 1957, she defected with her husband, and then, decades later, when she returned from Norway, she was suddenly struck by Budapest’s eclectic houses, the still-damaged stone figures, the grimacing masks. She began to paint the facades and gates, which she called silent witnesses, and the stones had indeed seen everything that happened on the streets: the people who were dragged away or fleeing, the tanks, the explosions, the murders. Her mother tried to protect Judit and her siblings from the horrors, to hide the children’s Jewish father, and to conceal the constant terror and fear. Many years passed before the first series was created in the early 1980s: Szenvedő házak (Suffering Houses), in which the painter began to “speak” about the traumas he had experienced.
Gergely Kósa was born in Budapest in 1990. His Jewish grandparents moved to 21/a Bulcsú Street in District XIII in 1956, a former star-marked house. Gergő lived on the fourth floor of this building, and as a young painter he began to research its history, persistently collecting the material and spiritual memories of its former and current residents. Following these stories, the microcosm of the building, the suspended corridors and hallways where the former residents came and went, talked, worried, or even feared, became the main subject of his paintings. Among his sources, a prominent place was occupied by the work of a former resident, the writer Rudolf Ungváry, entitled An Experience in a Tenement House at the Turn of 1944–45, which presented the everyday life of the residents in the besieged city. For Gergő, the geometrically patterned floors and wrought-iron railings are silent witnesses. He obsessively draws the repetitive patterns on his canvases, as if each drawing were a station in memory.
The exhibition of the two artists is a pictorial dialogue — an encounter and interplay between the experienced and the narrated past. In 2024, Equibrilyum Publishing released a monograph presenting the work of Judit Wellisch Tehel, and we held the book launch at 2B Gallery. It was then that the author of the book came up with the idea of presenting the works of these two artists side by side. Both painters liked the idea and prepared for the exhibition, but it was already clear that Judit would not be able to attend the opening in person. However, we hoped that she would be able to join us online.