Bálint Szombathy is an internationally significant figure of the new Yugoslav art generation that emerged in the late 1960s. His work has spanned a wide array of genres and media over the past decades. From the outset of his career, Szombathy has bridged historical avant-garde and Neo-avant-garde movements, making continuous and radical reflection on questions and challenges related to politics, identiy and history a key component of his art.
The exceptionally dense exhibition at acb Attachment simultaneously reflects on the early stages of Szombathy’s career through a selection of his iconic works, while also re-evaluates his oeuvre and the reality around us today by showcasing newer pendant pieces.
A unique feature of the exhibition’s historical tableau is the inclusion of rarely seen rubber-stamp works that the artist created in Berlin during the year of German reunification. Szombathy’s exhibition—as well as his entire body of work —highlights his flag works, which embody his artistic strategy based on over-identification and deconstruction.
Bálint Szombathy, recipient of Munkácsy Mihály Award of the Hungarian State, was a founding member of the Subotica-based Bosch+Bosch Group (active from 1969 to 1976) and served as graphic and art editor of the now-legendary Új Symposion journal in Novi Sad in the early 1970s and again in the late 1980s. After relocating to Hungary in the 2000s, he led the Magyar Műhely Gallery and edited Magyar Műhely Magazine in Budapest.