…vertical…

In the middle of the 1960s, István Nádler was among the first Hungarian representatives of the artistic movement called neo-avant-garde. The early seventies saw him work in a geometric hard edge style, and in the next decade he developed a completely new creative strategy: this more relaxed, heterogeneous formal idiom relied on musical influences.

In the 1990s, he became interested in Oriental philosophies, and painted his pictures while listening to Tibetan liturgical music and traditional Japanese drumming.

In 2001, Nádler had a major retrospective exhibition in Műcsarnok, whose catalogue offered a historical overview of his art, also discussed acutely by Lóránd Hegyi in a book published the same year. Nádler has remained consistent in his artistic search ever since.

The present exhibition opens a view onto the very important artistic development that has taken place since 2001, the radical formal innovations of the past seven years. The display begins with a work from 2001, and one from 1970 that emphasises the vertical dimension and references a colourful, energetic period in Nádler’s art, not unlike the present one.

After 2001, his black surfaces, which were combined with blue and white, became completely devoid of colour, and he restricted himself to the lyrical, sometimes playful, gestures of his broad brush. He took up colour again in 2005: first to return were colour fields that provided the foundations of the pictures, then the gestures themselves became colourful, and different hues of a single colour started to appear.

Following some pieces made between 2005 and 2007, the second part of the exhibition presents completely new pictures. Nádler, who made his own contribution to the concept of the display, created these specifically for the occasion, after carefully studying the exhibition space.