This autumn, the Vasarely Museum Budapest continues its tradition of presenting outstanding contemporary artists of international geometric abstract painting in individual exhibitions. Now the solo exhibition titled Networks by Ádám Szentpétery, a Hungarian artist from Slovakia, is on show in the chamber hall of the museum.
At the beginning of his career, Ádám Szentpétery, painter and art educator was inspired by the stylistic power of Victor Vasarely and the freedom of optical art. In the depressing cultural and political climate of the 1980s, he was one of the pioneers of abstract-geometric art in Slovakia, and today he has become the origin of non-figurative Slovak fine art. His oeuvre is organically integrated into the Central European tradition of constructivism and concrete art.
The basis of Szentpétery’s painting is classical modern (avant-garde) constructivism, which he combines with the geometric language of Hungarian neo-avant-garde painting of the seventies and eighties. His creative activity can also be linked referentially to the work of Victor Vasarely. He was interested in extending art to a wider audience as well as questions about the possible relationship between geometric and kinetic art and architecture.
In addition to his numerous public mural works, his large-scale paintings made over the past twenty-five years have become emblematic, despite the fact that geometric abstract art has still not managed to create sufficient reference space within the broader cultural and aesthetic framework of contemporary Slovak painting. His oeuvre can thus be regarded as a continuation of a wider Hungarian and European painting tradition. The visuality, optical illusion and square paintings of his tondos, which examine the balance between central and decentral compositions, can be compared to the op art paintings of Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley.
From the early period of Szentpétery’s work, a prominent character is the freehand-drawn, unmasked, disciplined gesture. This element of his art is constantly changing, but to this day it has retained its characteristics, which is the representation of a rectilinear slowly fading vertical, horizontal, or diagonal vector in the painting. Since 2007 he has been interested in the real and latent idea of the spatial depth of the image plane, his angular canvases often transform into a circular format, thus changing the shaping of visible space. It projects its previous straight lines onto a spherical surface using projective geometry and sets them in motion.
At the same time, the “curvature” of space into planes and the three-dimensional illusion of his works also reflect the development of technologies such as computer modelling and digital manipulations. Its monumental tondos can also be interpreted as visual “data spheres”. In his paintings, he typically prioritises the use of pure colours, which are often “hit” or covered with white or black.
His current solo exhibition entitled Networks presents the main works of the four parallel ongoing creative programmes of the past ten years. His eponymous painting cycle is represented by five large tondos and distorted circle (oval) shaped images. The spirit and pure colours of his panel paintings Rotation and Monotone, composed with large homogeneous surfaces, can be contextualised with concrete art and the minimalist painting of Imi Knoebel: he also gives an important role to the circular arch in his construction with his individual character.
The atypical Covid series (2020–2022) in his oeuvre serves as a memento reminiscent of the biggest pandemic in the last hundred years. In their use of colours, they remain with the classical modern (avant-garde) pure colours, but differ from other works in a number of characteristics in their method of painting and composition. The patterns of the Covid paintings float separated and isolated in endless space, thus breaking the interconnected, networked structure characteristic of the artist.