The gesture of respect is emphasised in the exhibition. The oeuvre is also extremely rich in the way that it commemorates important masters, colleagues, theorists and poets in a single painting. “Throughout my work, my ambition is to be a continuation of our great predecessors, the Masters, whom we so much respected, questioned and listened to when we were young.
It was precisely because of the handicap of publicity that we needed those meetings and discussions in the sixties, when we could go to Dezső Korniss, for example, who was making his epoch-making illuminations […] and we all knew that we were witnessing the birth of a great art.” At the same time, the artist is constantly reflecting on his own earlier work, returning to motifs, forms, colour combinations and schools of thought.
The exhibition is divided into three parts. In the first room, there are images that can be associated with homage, reflections on the figures, work and influence of masters, spiritual friends and relatives. These works are mainly large-scale paintings and portraits painted, drawn and inked.
In the second room, there will be a sound installation entitled Sound-Scene-Space, created by the artist in collaboration with composer László Vidovszky. In the third room we will exhibit paintings that are a kind of monument to the artist’s own work. These are paintings and graphic works, which are newer and newer reworkings of a motif, a theme, a scene, such as the Szuszek Studies, the Message series, the individual sheets and paintings of the Forming Space, or works that explore the problem of the Afterimage.
The selection in this room is intended to show how self-reflection, a commitment to one’s own artistic personality and work, and a conscious assumption of one’s role as an artist, are revealed in a life’s work. “Belonging to a profession is something that is slowly built up in one’s mind – that I am a painter, that I will be a painter – one understands that we are talking about an activity that is thousands of years old, belonging to a particular branch of humanity, which has not changed much in essence over time. And many people who are involved in artistic creation don’t have that awareness.”
Mária Kondor-Szilágyi