“Everybody in my family is a literary person. I grew up on Jókai and Verne books. Everything I red immediately appeared in my imagination. It was a joy. My way was pegged, devouring the books, frequenting a performers’ club. To became an actor? No. Probably because I could not sing. I registered myself to the University of Arts and Crafts primarily I had an interest in book illustrations and posters.

Literature has great effect, as for example, Babits’s poem: ‘The Eternal Corridor’ does.” – He cites at one breath – “The monotonous arches of the endless portico are swimming in the light of hidden sources. What for to look around? No wrinkles on smooth skies, your eyes do not find the ground…. “ (rough translation) And we are already at the architectural geometry, these three-dimensional-looking forms would be impossible to build, but sometimes possible to draw.

It is full of swindle. At the portico, the number of columns above and below differs. It has live trees and dead wood, just to present the time. The perfect picture is preceded by many ones. “They say there are two kinds of artists: one makes a series to gain one successful, the other makes a series of variations based on the single, first successful one.”

The Snail is a formal play, presenting the rule of golden ratio. “A snail, walking on the patio table, served as model. I made some photos to use it one time.”

“The ‘Ship of Fools’ is on publishing in ten volumes here just now, five of them are ready. I am charged with producing 112 copper etchings. In the late 1400s the book of Sebastian Brand was illustrated by Dürer first. The illustrations were woodcuts, that is, the drawings of Dürer, the Master Principal were carved and printed by woodcutter craftsmen (because there were assistant masters as well). There are many forms of reproduction.”

Prints are produced by heliogravure procedure, a form of the intaglio printmaking. Known for 200 years old, along this photo-mechanical process a copper plate is coated with a light-sensitive gelatine tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio print that can reproduce the detail and continuous tones of a photograph.

It is important how the paper is absorbing the paint. I prefer the Fabriano and Ingres paper (the latter is finely ribbed). But, if I want a really special, I order handmade ‘screened’ paper from László Vincze at Szentendre.

He puts a cylindrical mirror at the centre. “Mirror anamorphosis is no longer a devil’s trick, even a computer program was written to produce it. Traditionally, a picture is divided to small squares, and then copied into a layer. I made a development in this procedure: only a part of the picture is anamorphosic, giving a secondary meaning. Here is an illustration to the ‘The Raven’ of E. A. Poe. Many people speculate whether it is a fiction, or you hear the poet himself in the verse, as first person singular. While Poe would vehemently protest, I do show him at the mirror.”

Everywhere books. “We have so many, that we can not find what we need. Slowly we have to go to the library, if we want to read one of them.” On the shelf, there are his own works as well. He is ‘Utisz’, the writer (the Greek word means ‘nobody’). And for those being sick of reading, we are smuggling a few lines of him here:

“Opens the book, staring to your face/ It boldly looks into your eyes / It surely knows what you feel / What you think, it is forever.”

Graphics, animation, posters, books… what is more? We were lucky for we have seen the next, but this is a secret until autumn. The only comment: it will be totally new!

11/10/2011 Budakeszi

Elérhetőség és életrajz:

www.utisz-utisz.blogspot.com/

Szereti Budapestet, ahol a világ minden városa „megtalálható”. Nem véletlen, hogy szívesen forgatnak itt a filmproducerek. Imádja a hidakat, a villamost, mely “úgy siklik a házak között, mint egy kis állat, akár egy kis kígyó.” Tele van mozgási energiával. Élvezi az Erzsébet téren a nyüzsgést, a medence vizében káprázó foltokat.

Extatikus hatással vannak rá az intenzív színek. Érezni tőlük, ahogy töltődik az ember.

Jövünk valahonnan és megyünk valahova úgy, mint a sínek. A pályaudvar jelentheti az otthonunkat.

Sokat volt a vízen. Egy időben vitorlázott, később inkább a partról kezdte érdekelni a víz látványa.

I am greatly inspired by the world of artists’ colonies. I am present at at least five-six artists’ colony a year. I met the horses there as well. Everyone rode; there was nothing to do except to try it. The experience and my first horse had a so strong influence that I can not give up my oil painting depicting it.

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I am interested in the scenic problems, and the colours. Van Gogh and Gauguin influenced me at most. I do not believe the scholastic treatments that the relation of the complementary colours is the most important.

The cool shades are closer to me, but I deliberately leave out smaller spots for the warm colours. If these are more, the picture becomes over-define. The much red colours make the Nagybánya landscape unrealistic, even if the hillside is full of red cranberries. Preparing myself to the Hungarian group exhibition at Beijing, I was called that I had not sent enough pictures. Having no time, I painted lot of red coming out of me.

The landscapes, the sceneries affect me. I omit all of the trivial things, cars, and traffic signs. Be the picture more general, more ageless. I endeavour to use sketches.

To bring up emotions and memories, I convert the landscape freely, not exactly in accordance with the facts. Your eyes will notice such details, what do not appear in a photo. The camera records such perspectives, what we perceive differently.

I like the plants, so a tree is exciting for me. In bare form, because it loses its individuality if the leaves obscure the branches. Its trunk and branches have character.

Last year I painted several fruit trees. Apples were on them, rarely leaves.

I had some favourite subjects: pubs, dancers, horses, but I am unable to think on series. I am not motivated to do so. I can absorb myself into a work in such a way, that, finishing a picture, I exhaust, being unable to warm up again. I did not want to be driven by the routine.

I wish to return to the portrayal, but it is difficult to find an appropriate model. For me, it is important that the model be well-looking and I see him nice. Have something mysterious, something to decipher. I like to see behind the curtains, I am interesting in hidden things.

The composition is the predominant. I select the elements as the picture and the proportions dictate them. If something is necessary, I paint it to the picture. If something is unfit into the composition, I leave it, so the dog has three legs, or the chair has two.

I painted thickly before, but now I prefer to create a picture for a long time. I am constrained to work out the small spots.

Difficult to answer why my recent pictures are so strong and intense. Perhaps caused by the lack of opportunities. Nobody appealed what I made. It is a reaction to the fact that the opinion leaders in art do not recognise me. Oil paintings are considered obsolete and backward. ‘Painters are hundred years behind’ — they say. Critics award the brainstorming, appreciating the provocative. Contemporary galleries follow the foreign trendy. Painters and collectors are few who are thinking like me.

When I was young, I attended a drawing school of miners, 100 years old. I drew portraits, painted landscapes. No one believed my future. Still, I entered to the MOME – University of Arts. There I felt that the landscapes I painted became empty. Prof. János Fajó taught drawing, I owe to him to meet the geometric art, and this gave a new meaning to all.

Even in my university years I started to design iron stoves and fireplace sets for the Fireplace Ltd. I design 5-6 new models yearly; they sell 40-50 thousand pieces annually in Western European markets. There are combined models with stones and ceramics. Models are prepared in my workshop here.

I am engaged either in stove design or painting. Before painting I need few days to calm down. I start to paint a picture only when a certain feeling arrives.

The geometry offers endless possibilities. When I draw a form or its various variations, it is a hard job to limit a line, or which intersection would be better. How a surface be covered by another surface? Where is the point when we are talking about not only lines and colours, but something appears in the pictures as well? However, we must also take care not to lose the balance of the composition.

I use wood panels, so images are emerging from the plane. After two layers of thin priming, the third layer is of thick oil paint. Three or four hours must be given continuously to avoid breaking the brushstrokes and to follow the form.

There is no way to repeat or to repair. If the paint dries before I finish, or I make a mistake, I must scratch all and start it all again.

In the middle of the village the steadings of the cooperative were abandoned. Roofs torn, groundwater level was knee-high in the basement. In the yard: rusty tractors. It was rumored that a tractor is sunken even in the basement. Later we found a large piece of iron there. We kids came here to play.

This building, belonging to the Eszterházy estate, was built presumably around 1770, together with the curch. The local authority wanted to sell out the allotment cutting into four pieces, and to demolish the building. Fortunately, they had not money that time. I bought it later, to prevent the demolishing. During the renovation, I asked many times: need I this procedure? But, I live here, here are my workshops, I am able to entertain guests, and the cellar stores the vine of my father.

I got the screen printer device of János Fajó for a symbolic sum. For prints, you need to make a film. To make an ink-blocking stencil, a woven mesh is covered by a thin light-sensitive gum-like layer. Placing the film on the layer and exposing with light, the gum-like layer remains soft and soluble where the film contains “red spots”. Later paint is pressed with fill blade or squeegee across the mesh, repeated according to the number of colours in use. You will have a perfect print if having perfect margins, and if using a due movings of the blade.

I am dealing the idea to organize an artists’ camp, like the Szerencs Free School. I miss the days when we just dealt with geometry, and we were talking for hours about the composition…

19/7/2013 Császár

He passionately collects paper. „The paper itself signifys miracle. I always visited even the next-door tobacco shop, because the tobacco paper is fine, strong and sometimes has an interesting pattern. One day, receiving something quite special, the tobbaccoonist called me. Sheets of parchment papers were bound to miniature books. Turning then paging two books facing each other, they stuck together that I could never pull them apart.

For me, this was a symbol of the human relations. An idea of a series emerged in me: the Books of Destiny. A next-door lawyer just wanted to throw away her outdated collection of laws. I used them first.

As the pages and letters touch each others then separate, a new story is formed. Just as a relationship between two people. Intertwined personal tragedies, woundings, and burnings can be later dissolved visibly. Then, what is exciting, you are unable to read the original text anymore.

When founding the title of this series, I did not realised that this was a very serious thing. One day, entering a second-hand bookshop, I directly went to a shelf. Absent-mindedly I started to read a book. Its author Eric Berne, was a psychologist, investigating the „transaction analysis”, and he wrote a whole series with the title „Books of Destiny”.

The wall of the studio is filled with books, what he illustrated, or (at least) he designed theit covers. It is no wonder that he has a special link to the book, almost all the same to an old novel or to an outdated phone book. Not to talk about the covers.

“One day we drove to Révfülöp from Veszprém. Wheatfields gleamed yellow, red of the poppies marked out from the wheat. The sweeping picture induced by the motion challenged my interest.”

I made a painting by using the same technique of the artistic books the serie of “Book-Landscapes”. I was amazed that it was possible to reach such a high resolution, that nobody could reach before in another way. It is true, anyway, that I needed the edges of 1200 sheets cut

You can make anything from paper. “Folding is great” – as he wrote in his book, revealing the secrets of origami. Most people enthuse over the frog even now. But, to our greatest sorrow, we could not meet the rabbit of nearly 2 meter high, what he folded from cardboard for an exhibition.

5/1/2012 Budapest

Munkácsy-prize

Before leaving, I went to the Zoo to see what needs attention. We travelled by bus from Los Angeles to Mexico City, then hitchhiking around nearly two months there. In my sailor-bag there were my clothes, plus a sleeping bag and the hammock. To sleep on the ground is a danger. On the beach, we rocked between two poles in the night, below us run the crabs, even some scorpions. Being on the way: it is one of the best things in the world. Danger can be everywhere.

I met with scorpions even in Turkey. Under a stone abruptly overthrown, I saw the translucent green body and the rising sting behind. In a second I was on the top of a cliff. In Peru my camera was robbed with its bag, I did not resist for the keeper of a restaurant had a revolver in his open drawer. That time this was the biggest value with me, could not possess for long.

Preparing myself to travel to China, I learnt 700 ideograms in a year. I would surely not able to manage the literary vocabulary of the people’s China, praising the heroic partisan girls and Mao Tse-tung. I did not get to China, but I made agraphic series titled „Tour to West“, based on a Chinese novel. I like the classic Chinese literature.

You cannot reach every place. Reading multiplies the human life, as if it would be a hundred. Read the Fernando Pessoa poem: “Ship, boarding to far away route…” Just the infinity. I like the short stories, especially of Kafka. Originally, my horse was printed in one-color: “Desire to become Indians”. I could not later resist the induction, and I colored it.

Kafka writes about the loneliness, as well as our anguish. My linocut titled “The bird of Kafka” is on this theme.

We hardly have room at home. My stuff is everywhere. There is a pole at the doorpost, for I have had yoga for 40 years. I grew up here. The house was damaged during the war, pieces of the colored window frames and ceramic ornaments remained. In the sixties the plasterworks were cleared, for a while the house was bare, then painted uniformly. Twenty years ago my TV set was discarded, the taste of our son Ákos is not destroyed by computer games. If he has intention, he paints such this one.

This year, I travelled to Norway with my son. This journey for two was the first prize of the photo contest “Europe is Beautiful”. I was in Erdély/Transsylvania together with a friend of folk music. The atmosphere was very good, our hosts began to dance – I thought I could enter that picture to the contest.

I produce mostly linocuts, but I do etchings, woodcuts and drawings. For linocuts, I sometimes upscale my palm-sized drawings. Playing with forms, bizarre things are produced.

The artist is experimenting. The things learned – like the words of a language. The more of them, the bigger the possibility to vary.

For linocuts, I am using floor-covering linoleums. I have a lot of tools, but I mostly use several favorites. Walking on the street, and seeing the small fish-shaped agate pendants hanging in the necks of the women, I feel a desire to tear off its tail fins (not limited to this desire, of course), because the tool made of agate is the best to etching and grinding for mezzotints, while it is used for gilding by restorers as well.

Just like at reading, when I draw, things are appearing before me, I feel their smell and air. I am fond of graphics, if I could, I prefer to do so day and night. Or, I deal with the nature. Cutting up a cabbage, I turn it to draw. I make photos on the dried soil, then I prune my trees. Or, hanging out in the woods, I pick mushrooms; sleep outside in a tent, even in wintertime.

7/10/2011 Budapest

The crowd swarmed along the streets of Toledo, below the summer sunshine. The sudden idea came when returning from the El Greco museum: let us make a picnic over the city, from where Greco painted the famous townscape. We climbed up to the rocks along the steep side, bringing some bottles of wine. Fresh of white wine, old of red wine. We jumped off several hundred of years.

Nobody remembered, when was the decision (that time or later) to paint a picture together, with a joint effort, as the great foregoers did. The opportunity came just now, when the local district government was lending a large empty retail unit for one month, to promote the painting in the society. As above the studio of Tiziano before, you can read: Sensaria (‘fresh air’), calling in the passers-by. A note on the door: Open Studio, open daily from 10 to 18.

Members of the Sensaria Association are working and exhibiting here. They established the association in 2003 at the University of Finearts, classmates of Zsigmond Károlyi’s class. Other young artists, having interests in the traditional art, joined later. The art historians are talking on new figurality nowadays. Pictures of landscapes, still-lifes, portraits.

“The picture on the wall is shivering alone, waiting for someone coming and addressing it. Some crazy people made a group, dealing with showing the world as it was created: grass grows, sun shines, man and woman are living… We want to paint pictures, what are understandable without university studies as well. The challenge of the picture is to grab me, while the job of the painter is to get the most out of the theme. A picture is good if honest.” They are talking on what they think freely.

Lehel Kovács paints the wounds of landscape, what nobody would paint. Tamás Lőrincz creates self-portraits, mirror images, and an F-1 car, as a symbol of the energy inside. Ábel Szabó portrays the objects, dealing by no arts, even if these items are effecting the lives of many. Krisztián Horváth raises the perishableness and rebirth into philosophical high. Dániel László paints his daughter walking in the garden, or his son in the “Terror’s House” Museum, when he created a series on the ‘socialist’poverty, titled “Mátyás Rákosi and his time”.

They delineate our country, abandoned industrial zones, warren-like building estates, and the lands lying fallow. They observe the little island around a dilapidated farmhouse inside the plow-land. Fields are re-divided now! Who knows, residents departed hastily perhaps, maybe expelled, gas and electricity lines are living, crop is inside.

For them, sacrality is not a gag of the avant-garde; they have not a cynical approach to the religion. The intimate air of a church, the towering figure of the columns, the small statue of the little Jesus and Mary, made by Zsófia Balogh – these are the answers how our new generation feels about the faith.

The modern art has some self-mutilation nature. Until the modernism, people managed themselves and their environment in more proportion. Some people think that they become trendy and advanced, if denying. An artist can be minimalist even if looking for simple themes, working out in more expressive mode.

Visitors were variegated. A girl came in a real punk attire, rings in her ears, wearing black T-shirt, field dungarees, boots. Despite her aggressive lookout, she was very nice and inquiring, of delicate and sensitive soul. A woman often visited them. She was standing before a picture for a long time. “I was greatly wondering what she was thinking.”

The last day of opening, there was the two pictures of the joint effort presented. The “Budakalász landscape” was a self-developed composition. Somebody arrived and painted what he/she thought. Lehel painted the sky, Krisztián the mountains, Dani the meadows and the figures, and Tamás the big wine bottle. Ábel decided that he must not put more to the theme. For the other picture “Toledo” we have some discussion and photos. Everybody used his/her own palette, so the colors are mixed differently at the limits. “We could surprise even each others.”

What happened at this retail unit in the Bartók street? Based on a good intention, there were an avalanche of experience, a coming-out, joint hopes. We have learned that the thorough self-knowledge and the acceptance of how others see us can build a strong confidence in us. In this way we need not to give up our individuality, everybody can find his/her position, and at the end, the great work comes into being.

7/6/2012 Budapest

Tagok / Members:

Balogh Zsófia
Horváth Krisztián
Horváth Roland
Kovács Lehel
László Dániel
Lőrincz Tamás
Szabó Ábel

“The canoe slid on the water with quiet babbling. Approaching the shore, I bowed my head below the hanging branches… I cannot tell you how much the rare moments are missing while touring on the Tisza, the Sajó, and the Danube. “ After graduating at the university, everything suddenly changes. I realized that I lived before in chrysalis. I found myself to write down all.

First, what happened around me, and what the newspapers published, then what happened to me when an event happened, or what I was thinking about it. Pen sketches, made with the same obsession as the records, were paired one day.

I realized that this is a quest with me: where is the border between the picture-type thinking and the social awareness.

My diary is an interesting experiment as well in terms of how I can present my personal stories, just approaching the limit of intimacy.

Visiting an exhibition, I automatically look for works containing “writing inside the picture”. I was really surprised that this is my world. I had to experience our language limitations. Recently I appeared in a Zurich exhibition. There was in vain the exact translation beside my pictures, the audience badly received the Hungarian text.

The word is complicated, so I started to collect advices from others. Based these advices, I made 36 small pictures. These were made for three years. I think this series forms one work, because it reflects my grippings and the process of my life’s evolution. My favourite ones: “What is your goal? Find it!” and “Do not go to bed without getting yourself a fun that day!”

I brought four large circular pictures to an exhibition, but I wrote advices only for three, one was empty. The audience could vote for this fourth picture, and the best (for me) message was painted on the empty picture at the last three days. Thinking together mobilizes people.

If you do not keep a lookout, you are easily absorbed by a world that irrevocably excludes all other life. Without observing it, you would be a lazy movement on a well-constructed picture. Alike a pop-art collage presenting the US in the sixties, you can simply have a look around, and it will be clear: we are rocking on the waves of the fashion, having nothing common with the reality of today.

We need breakout points. I am looking for novelty even in the colors. I like off-color paints. I quest the color tunes for turquoise and peach. I usually browse Gaudí when I am looking for the shade summing up the whole together.

How is made up a picture? What happens if we rewrite an existing picture? If we reinterpret its every motifs? We simply appropriate the theme. The plate of King Matthias enlarged to two meter will not tell us much, but if you insert into the broken rim of a dial a quay, a girlfriend with bike, and a landscape with the Parliament in the background — well, we can observe the time and space together.

I selected this topic at the DSc school as well. Time and space would be just the theme of my three-year research. I think I should and could learn a lot. Now I work at the Amadeus Foundation studio, but starting in international projects cannot be excluded. I seek the company of good people, with whom I am in the same wavelength. I like to talk and to discuss. I observed that those being able to agree are the people to argue the most. After all, there is no reason to dispute with those who are ever harping on the same string?

6/5/2012 Budapest

The subway started with an abrupt thrust. The man’s head, supported by his palm, jolted hardly. For a moment, his eyes opened, and then he returned to his original posture. “For years, I make sketches on the subways, buses, trams. In that time I learned how I can see somebody not observing that I am watching him/her”.

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“For a long time past I collect the ‘stolen’ moments. In recent weeks I started a series. Its working title used is ‘The bored ones’ till now. The pictures present the idle or reading-wrapped figures on the Budapest public transport. It is characteristic that none of the people is making eye-contact. Involuntarily they fit into the typic architecture of the vehicle. In the pictures I emphasise the geometry the static ambience of a subway or tram, while the figures are depicted in just one but characteristic brush-stroke

So far, figurality accompanied me during my work, and it is likely that this will remain for a while. I began to study drawing early, this determines my relation to painting. During my academic years I could copy baroque pictures as painting studies.

It was a touching moment when an elderly model, acquainted from the university, offered me sitting by courtesy, just to support my studies.

Last year several times I painted cardboard boxes, garbage bags, and trash containers. Many people asked why Ideal with these? In fact, their beauty captivated me: the colours of the plastic bags, the geometry of the boxes, their irregularities formed along the use.

Even before I treated the street junks. Six years ago, I brought home my first front door, salvaged as street junk, to transform to painting. These became the frames of my works, mentally and physically. My thesis work started from two doors, even the dirt on the glass was built in into my pictures.

For two years I teach at the High School of Fine and Applied arts, being the form master of a first-grade class. In my planned series I want to treat the traditions, the customs, and the tools of teaching drawing. In the first pictures of this series I painted the plaster castings of antique sculptures. Another theme was the everyday situation of the teaching. Students are sitting on bucks in semi-circle around the view, and draw absorbed in their works.

I could get into the Amadeus Creative House as a winner of the Art Collectors Award, founded in 2009. I started in a smaller studio, but from year to year I could move to a larger premise. Now I am able to paint even a 2×2.5 m picture. It becames clear in a larger space only, that a painting not so monumental, as it appeared at close range in a narrow space.

22/6/2012 Budapest

Read more:

honlap: www.szabofranciska.hu

“It is exciting to me how to think effectively on the space. I consider myself a sculptor, but I paint with the same energy as well. My paintings are rather sculptors too. Sometimes I colour my sculptures. The two artistic forms always interact.”

He is enquired on his statues on public places, for we want to understand the form of the Salgótarján 1956 memorial, almost floating on one fixed point. „I wanted a talented solution, how is possible to disagree with the laws of statics. You cannot know whether the man is to run escaping or to fall“.

An other enigmatic work is the Karl Lutz memorial in the Jewish Quarter of Budapest., a flying man in a ribbon. The Swiss diplomat helped to save 62,000 Jewish people. The Gypsy Holocaust Memorial in Budapest is a “peephole” statue. The black triangle of shiny granite column is a symbol; the triangle marked the Gypsies in the concentration camps. The gold-plated inner surface of the statue is “glowing” as from the fire of crematoriums, behind the tongues carved into the granite we can see only a piece of a golden, crippled people.

The Százados street Art Colony, in suburban environment, next to the football stadium is 100 years old this year. Our imaginations are wandering: what life was here before. The buildings want renovations badly as well. He lives and works here. We are almost in the downtown, but you feel free to hammer the metal, to carve stone, to cut with chain-saw.

In the studio there is little evidence of classic sculptures. “In 2005, full with the previous aesthetics, I am through with the statuettes

Slat-irons and wrought iron nails came. He looked for new plastic ideas. Although the rivet-heads are nicely gathered, …

“… I am just at the beginning of the working out this form system; I have 10 years’ work at least.”

The riveted figures were inspired by the Tisza culture of 7000 years. “I found this beautiful idol of large bums in the Tornyai Museum.” Just now, a part of this series of wood and aluminium is in Moscow, at the joint exhibition of the MORF group.

Each sculpture has a special message. The statue of Kazo (el Kazovszky) is accompanied even by his dog. I hope we can once wander in a forest of statues together.”

“The world is approaching to the brutality.” Perhaps after African antecedents, these heads were made in 2009.

“I like to do what I do; I come to the studio, I do my work, then go to bed, get up and continue. If I walk out of the Art Colony, the problems start. I need to buy tram tickets…”

15/6/2011 Budapest

“I think the painting is not a picture puzzle! The artist paints the gestures and lines by intuition, and there is no need to decipher everything. My pictures are a kind of totems, signal sources. Not necessarily readable ones, rather primary signals, having meanings at the moment of the painting. The artist creates his own myths using colors, forms and signs.”                                                  .

All around pictures, sometimes covering each other gently, rich colors, studio atmosphere. His genre is the flat plastic art, in other words, statuesque images built of monochrome ways. This is a synthetic world, where the space is not painted, but arises from the use of the material. An ancient wall, showing rune-like patterns.

“I make collages from my drafts, using to produce my paintings later. Often, I have included a picture in picture; sometimes details are highlighted with gold foil.

Remaining some pieces of canvas, these leftovers are applied to my paintings, cut into stripes. It may become the part of the composition. I use coarse sackcloth as well.

I mix sand with paint to produce a special background, what you can etch, plaster, and stamp. The sand makes the brillance of the paint to blend; the paint become more flat, more pastel-hued. If I want to produce a very hot colour, oil or bitumen is used. My pictures are made of mixed technique, I use everything from collage to the terra-cotta and graphitic pastes.

I like sealing even more. I usually prepare my seals of wood, linoleum, Styrofoam, any different materials. I found old wooden seals even in the second-hand market. It is a rarity, probably they used to seal grain sacks. Its best use is on handmade paper.

Familiar African elements: sand, dryed bull’s heads, fired totems. The etchings, stratched on surfaces resembling on fissurized dried soil or crumbling plaster, have a special message. “ I am inspired by the African culture. They produce works of elementary power, they portrait the environment with incredible simplicity, they use natural materials in displaying.”

He works mainly for exhibitions, preparing new objects for any occasion. The themes need systematic thinking. “When painting, I must transfer my inside energy, I have to apply it into the picture, that the picture should tell it to the wiever later.”

1/8/2011 Budapest

Aktuális

The visit was cancelled! “ Lacking support and money, the Szerencs School terminates its operation of 35 years. The exhibition at the Fuge Gallery is open to visitors, worth to see it. Regards, János Fajó”. The two-week camp of the 36th International School and Colony of Arts was advertised for 15-29 of July.

Registered before as visitors, we received the abovementioned depressing and even shocking answer. In the circular of the 2012 Camp you could read: “The Art Camp was established by István Szathmáry in 1976. Leading artists were Pál Deim, Tibor Csiky, Ádám Misch, and János Fajó. Transformed in 1990 to Association to preserve its professional level and independence, it moved to Szerencs, a town in East Hungary in 1994. Being organised for two weeks in second week of July of every year, 80-140 young people from 4-5 countries participates.

The spirit of the colony and the school is penetrated by the geometric, factual art. “We teach the pure form in all of materials, techniques, theory and function. Here we deal in self-extracting only, 24 hours a day. In this school we are modeling the way of life what necessary for this job. This is the living of life, that is, reaching of the individual to himself, which is different to any conventional and common. Purposeful and custom-made” (János Fajó).

As the circular says, the Camp consists of 8 sections. Art director is János Fajó, artist decorated by the Kossuth Prize, teaching the fundamentals of composition as well.

Studies of natural objects: Balázs Pataki, industrial design and graphic artist

Etching and engraving, linocutting, silkscreen printing: Tamás László Kovács, graphic artist and sculptor.

Photographic technique and camera use: András Matkócsik, director and screenwriter, laboratory practice: Júlia Stradovár, and Eszter Galambos

Ceramic design (objects and tableware): Zsuzsanna Réthy

Sculpture: András Kludovácz

Fundamentals of architecture, modeling of space connections: Jenő Kapy (DLA, Ybl Award)

Animation, digital design practices, and visual experiments: Bálint Botzheim, architect

The Creative Camp Association was established to replace what the downgraded drawing studies at the high schools is not able to product: detecting the talented ones and preparing them for access to higher education. Searching the talented young people, the Association strives to look for the gold nuggets in the sand, because it knows: the frontline of any nation consists of the talent and aptitude. Any humane advancement and wealth begins here.

Participants at the Creative Camp could become artist by cooperative activity. The method is based on voluntariness. Ten years ago the Creative Camp was complemented with an Art Camp, where formerly home-grown, made artists work as well.

Perhaps an era had terminated. But what about its doctrine? Slight consolation, that this institution excelling in the domestic art education will be presented in a professionally competent study.

The utmost what we can do at this website is to present as much young artists “growing up” in this Camp, to pass their modern mindsets, rescuing what rescueable. When we visited the exhibition, we had no idea on the developments. We prepared to the ‘great’ visit, as usual. Our photos made in haste might reflect some values what the Szerencs Free School of Art produced along the last 35 years.

Those finding these lines at this site, and reading the opening words of János Fajó at the Fuga exhibition (www.fuga.org.hu) could understand what is the sense of thinking, and what is the role of the art not for art’s sake.

“The smallest particle of the society is the individual, but the quality of the society depends on this individual. The future of a nation depends on the individuals developed to be personalities. And, of course, on the social policy, what is able to recognize this effect, and assists to evolve the talents knowingly and using due projects. Not doing against this evolving, but helping it! A country is poor and restless, if unbalanced, if it has no values. If does not know, what is important, what is more important and what is unnecessary luxury. These made the citizens irrigated. Poverty can be only accepted by justice and having social perspectives. Inverted values of the power takes the country into sure destruction and degradation…”(excerpt)

15/7/2012 Budapest

www.szabadiskola.hu