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The paraphrase of Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ was made in the Arboretum of Jeli.

He studied non-figurative painting, but always interesting in the reality. He is using the body cast either its positive or negative side, then he paints it with oil.

His first studio was in a dilapidated loft. A mortar box, used at the refurbishment, contains the ‘Kőmíves Kelemenné’ (1)

(1) The ballad of Kőmíves Kelemenné/Ms.Mason is about a woman who was walled up in the fortress of Déva

Everybody sees in such a way, as we see the woman of four eyes. If you put the plate behind the head, and the head itself is very close to you, a double vision is developing.

Awards:

Kismartoni tanár úr rajzom fölé hajolt
Szabady tanár úr az osztály előtt megdicsért
Művészeti Gimnázium rajzverseny, 1959., I. díj
Művészeti Gimnázium rajzverseny, 1961., I. díj
Művészeti Gimnázium rajzverseny, 1962., II. díj
Sopron, „Türkiz Diploma”, 1962.

Képzőművészeti Akadémia, 1969., megosztott I. díj
Forradalmi Hagyományok, 1970.
Tanácsköztársaság Évforduló, 1969.
Képzőművészeti Lektorátus, Gobelin pályázat, 1973.
Lenin évforduló, Műv. Alap, 1970.
Derkovits ösztöndíj, 1971.

Dózsa pályázat, 1972.

Stúdió díja, 1973.
Hazám pályázat, 1974.
Munkánk a holnapért, 1975.
Honvédelem II. díj, 1978.
Ösztöndíj, Brüsszel Royale Akademie, 1978.
Marx 100. évforduló, 1983., II. díj
Gödöllő Egyetem, „A Föld”, 1986., I. díj
Zalaegerszeg, Sportcsarnok, 1988., I. díj
Hódmezővásárhely, Őszi Tárlat, 1996.
Hódmezővásárhely, Őszi Tárlat, 2005.
Hatvan, Magyar Tájak, 2004., Bronz Diploma
Szolnok, Tárlat, 2005.
Hatvan, Arcok és sorsok 2005., Arany Diploma
Szeged Nyári Tárlat, 2005.
Vasszécseny Díszpolgára, 2009.
Pro Cultura, Újbuda, 2010.
Szombathely, Dunántúli festők biennáléja 3. díj, 2010.
Koller-Díj 2013

He was always interested in the question: what was the source of the power in the ancient Egyptian societies to be able to maintain a stable hierarchy, where the depiction remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years. A kind of narrative was launched for him by the expressive power of the profile-depicted human heads. He experienced, imagined and developed a world, where the side-turned heads whisper to each other’s ears, because the ruling political force of the society can achieve such a leading power, that all the people afraid to tell the truth and their opinion.

„The construction-like installation of the profile-depicted humanoid elements, faces and forms has an antitype: an 1986 particular graphic of mine, depicting whispering men’s profiles along a line. When I was in college, I made it for the cover of the „Hangár” audio-book (a Hungarian book distributed on tape casettes), requested by my friend, L. Császár, the author, living that time in the Netherlands. The tapes contained the works of the selected Hungarian and foreign writers, being usually read by the authors themselves.”

He depicted only men at first, mainly infirm faces. Eventually faces smoothed, and the emotions became less and less important. The clearly masculine forms slowly disappeared. He constructed his large forms with unisex faces, causing uncertainty in the viewers, in which he closed his figures forever. “We send ourselves to solitary confinements, enwalling us with thousands of locks, chains, bars, both physically and figuratively. We are afraid that the sins and squalors of the outside world reach us, but in this way our living space becomes limited, even absurd, permanently.

“For our security, we want to exclude all of bad things, but this would exclude the good as well, we cannot radiate outward our own goodness as well. On the street, we look on the others mistrustfully, while we would become acquainted, even opening a bright world, getting the greatest experiences of our lives, and making lifelong friendships, even if we meet nevermore perhaps. It does not come in our mind that it depends on us, walking past wonderful people. Lonely and full of fears, we doubt the happiness and the beauty of the life and the world. And this is extravagance!”

“About three years ago I lifted my figures from their jailhouse, colors were gone, a strictly monochrome world dawned on me. A more realistic picture of the human body appeared. The heads often continued to be a cube. To these cube-like sculls you can fill a wide variety of information, without any classification.”

“The ’Too Poor to be Rich, too Rich to be Poor’ and ‘Too White to be  Black, too Black to be White’ titles are fragments of live speech just grabbed. They suggest that inheriting the spiritual poverty, lack of culture and tolerance, demagogy, unprincipled lying, exclusion, petty jealousy, hate and fear to the next generations could be a problem of the whole society, but also the responsibility of the nearest environment. At least everyone should square up with himself individually!”

“The sympathy in the mankind must not disappear! According to my expertise in the US, funerals have become rapidly developing parties. Earlier, one or two people deceased each year in a given community. It was enough time to process the loss, to say goodbye, to weep and to outlive the grief. Today the world pours on us the terrible tragedies. The human ability to process the tragedies cannot keep up with the flood of mass deaths. For defense, we want to come through the mourning. In my pictures the figures, seemingly grieving, are ashamed, but the vivid colors betray that they are all adrift, and this is a false play.

“In my pictures the figures emerging from the landscape, the cube and house-like people, bricked soothsayers, the little gods, the great gods, the evil-courageous-meek-frail people sometimes blacken, sometimes become color again behind the cracked plaster, symbol of the timelessness, the angry facial features sometimes are to refine, then to harden. Behind each picture there is a long story. “

Munkácsy-díj (1997)

“In my university time, during the summer artists’ camp we with my mate were making the required drawings on a roadside crucifix. Suddenly a woman wearing rubber boots appeared. Seemingly she worked at the local wine farm. “Every day I pass by this Christ “ she said,” and I should like to buy what you draw. What is the price? “ “But it is not ready!” I said incredulously. “ No problem” she answered.

I was in trouble. I did not sell anything to anybody before. I did not dare to ask twenty, ten was not enough, so I said, 15 forints. “Right. Then I wait you in the evening “ she said, giving her address. We went three. Well surprised, because she prepared good food, and there was vine on the table. Frankly said, it was a strong wetting of bargain. The time passed, we hardly succeeded to stand up from the table, and we left toward the camp in total darkness. But we lost our way in a bush, and wandered till dawn. After daybreak, we realized that we have been roving in a few square meters round. Some years later, as a scene-painter/sculptor at the Opera House, I had to paint a forest. The director ordered: “Be realistic, dense, mystic, have perspective, and be crossed with wandering paths”. Based the former experience, I applied buckets of paint. That is the habit in the theatre. Well, I priced my next picture more daringly…

A studio in a peaceful country house style.

A tiny pond in the garden, a statue waiting for its customer below the porch, two Transsylvanian hounds. Just coming Bagheera, the cat. Furniture of partly middle-class, partly peasant-baroque style. An old stove gives us the fine warmth, the radio tuned to an oratorio.

Knobbly, bony, surreal sculptures on unexpected places, as though the cargo of a sunken ancient ship, or findings of an excavation.

The loft, as an attic in the time of our childhood. I remember: when we were visiting a village house, we waded laughing through the heaps of discarded armchairs, old lamps, bird-cages, rocking horse, caskets, lace skirts, grandmother’s clothes. We were knee-deep in corn. Funny, but those objects are reflected in his paintings.

Insects are clattering, mouse, blue cat, frog are on the canvasses. In the air a butterfly and an airship are flying, together with a house and a car.

A busted lady preens herself on the couch; red-nosed hunters have a debauch. Among the roof balks, pastels are whispering, in other places colours are crying.

The whole tabletop serves as a paint palette. “ You shoot my dirt?” my host asks, and while we look for the matched colours, he finds a real mildew green. Inspired by the extraordinary hue, he paints the colour patches into their final locations in ecstasy.

While he paints and smears, we take photos. The life can be taken seriously until there are humor and poetry!

12/1/2011 Érd

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totherno.fw.hu

In 1976 I was called up to the Taszár base. I suffered a year in the barracks, but there was the football. One day I broke my leg while playing. The commander saw me limping at the end of the line, so he transferred me to the Balatonkiliti Airstrip as radio operator. We were three there, no any airplane.The other two studied for archeology, they dug all days. The real archeologists were annoyed, for they were not allowed to enter heavily guarded military zone. As for me, I drew and painted. I got a nice year.

My father was painter and sculptor. I learned everything by watching him. I also wanted to be a painter, but I did not learn well enough, so I could not enter to the Art College. What is more, I was from the baby boom, so we were too many

I liked and imitated the painting of Ignác Kokas, and the surrealism of Dalí and Max Ernst. Wanting something big, I painted a five-meter canvas. I felt this was not enough for me. I wanted to step into the three-dimensional space. In 1984 I found an abandoned quarry in the Balaton Highlands, near Diszel. I made a scaffolding the curved concrete wall of a silo, and among the trees the five-meter draft was spread. This was the ‘Visions’. This completed my surrealist era. In 1987 I went to France.

Paris opened the world of hundred variations for me. I had no special ambitions; I wanted to paint. I travelled a lot. Even now I prefer to live in Bretagne at the seashore. But, I had to live on something; I produced floral still life paintings of Dutch style for a landscape trader. He suddenly disappeared, surely finding a cheaper source of supply in China.

Living abroad, I realized that French people are the same as others. The Hungarians have more vitality.

In France, finally, I got powder tempera paint, while only ArtFund members got this at home. I prepare myself my tempera after the recipe of grand old painters. Using this, it is more pleasant than oil. The tempera produces as clear colors as water, I can paint multiple layers, and it is deletable.

What do I paint? I make fictious prints on the memory of Earth. Signs, drawings, what the caveman scribbled. What will remain after us? Traces and bones, after the excavation. My figures are etched into the still plastic, rude cement surface. The sign of totem, what I use on pictures and sculptures, evolved slowly. This is my logo, my totem.

I paint on plywood. Two meters long, just to pass through the door. My statues are made of concrete, but dismountable. Transportability is a must, I lived in the 4th floor in Paris, and now in Budapest as well, without elevator.

In 2007 I moved back, bringing home my pictures and sculptures. I had a great exhibition in the B55 Gallery. By a friend of mine, I got in touch with a Frenchman, who purchased almost everything. So many objects of mine returned to France. These wanted to live in France, where were born. Interesting. “A work of art must have its way and fate!”

25/2/2012 Budapest

What is the difference between the etching and engraving? “If I enter a gallery, it is engraving. If everyone else, then etching. The dry point (engraving) technique is very accurate. One tendency of it is a precise academic style, the other is called free incision. We cut the same line from both direction with a the razor sharp chisel”- he shows it bending over the magnifying glass. “In the cooper etching, there is a lot of unwanted effect. Unreliable. To prepare bank notes, documents, stamps engraving is used.

The 500-forint note was safe, as well as the 100-forint one, delineating Meggyesy’ sculpture, ‘Mother and Child’. It was a team effort in which I participated.”

„Csaba Rékassy, the true professional engraver, was a true bohemian. This is a story on him. Just before Christmas he borrowed 500 forints from his mother. He gave back with delay, so he made a banknote of 620 forint, containing, as he thought, the interest and the inflation. He wanted to produce few copies only, so he crossed out its back. I engraved the backside, presenting a strange alchemy workshop, titled ’How to produce money of shit’. My director normally understood the joke, but I was fired.

Polyvalent colouring enriches engravings. What is more, it is possible to apply subtle shades inside a colour, using different depths of carving.

Using powdered rosin, the aquatint method can make the surface more exciting, that is, more tonal. An excellent example for this technique is this picture: „If my grandmother were the Queen of England”.

According to the classical standards, beside of the title of the printout, the artist marks the technique of preparation (often abbreviations are used: C2 cooper etching, C3 engraving), as well as the paper type and the copy number/sequence number.

His ’ex libris’ activity is listed at international level. Publishers are well aware, that they always can count on something strange, stunning. „ You can not know in advance what is capturing immediately, and what will be a good stroke later. They are afraid the skull. If erotic, they are considering: what the neighbours would say?”

His paraphrases can be easily understandable knowing the Bible, the lives of the saints, the history, the literature, the arts… and the small and great things of the life. There may not be a taboo in the world on which we could not laugh! Others apprehensively think that there are things not object of joke. But, everyone has the freedom to decide. „Sapienti sat”.

Along the line of the engravings, not free of irony, we please to discover „Annunciation the gasoline engine”, „Lot fleeing from Sodom” bringing thousand objects of the modern life, „ Jacob’s dream with the angel” showing looms and tailors in the Heavens…

And Our Lady marching to the Heavens by embroidered elevator surrounded by angels. And, enhancing the mental tensions: what is the play of the devil?

22/12/2011 Budapest

“Putting aside my fresh diploma of arts, I started with my wife to Australia. I went on a study tour, plus our relatives waited us. My suitcase was filled with my paintings. These would be good if being out of money, I thought. At the border customs I was full of fear, but at the Budapest airport nobody was care for the paintings of a nameless young painter, the Australian immigration looked for things of plant origin. Finally all of my paintings were sold, and, really, I visited the Sydney Opera House. It seemed to be a dream what happened to me.                                                                                     .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                .

As a child, when I hardly reached the level of the table, I remember that relatives arrived for farewell dinner, because there were ones to be forced to leave this country. I had no idea what that means.

I did not even understand the true stories on events of the war. I remember people of elegant habits, beautiful but worn-out suits and hats. They behaved themselves with dignity and discretion. They came and disappeared. Through these hard times my family lived in Kalocsa. There is not enough book and movie depicting well these times, just to survey somehow what is hidden in our social consciousness.

“Anyhow, I remember my early life with joy. In the evenings we played music, we were knocking about in the bogs and forests with hunters; we voyaged to Budapest on steamboat. I knew the life of the Tatra sanatoriums from the stories. I learned painting and to play piano. Will I be a pianist, a biologist, or a painter? I made the rebellion of teenagers with living out of the world. The solitude and the smell of turpentine gave me my inner peace. So the question was decided, I became a painter. Since then, I have a kind of defiance, I feel myself balanced when affronting the trendy movements. “

His small atelier is in a house of the Pasarét district, rich in Bauhaus buildings. Stepping in the studio, even without observing the figures, we are captured by the colours of mystic character. The intricate family history is step-by-step revealing the greenish, brownish, somewhere purple tones; a remembrance or a person is appearing and disappearing behind the contour lines. Artists of the family, love confessions of famous poets to an aunt, details of classicistic buildings of architectural heritage are formed. Bartók is on the radio, the paintings of “Concerto” series are answering back.

The conductor orders ‘piano’ in vain, the bizarre orchestra seems to defy him. “Hearing music, I compose in more abstract way” – he say. Meanwhile painfully realistic or blurred images of soldiers or refugees are coming out from the near and far past.

“I always backed the fallen ones, so I must to do something. A clown consoles the wounded child, angels are watching over us”. When we are at the fallen angels, “It is obvious, we are not complete without human weaknesses” – he says, opening his arms wide, as St. Francis does with his palms on the painting with halcyon.

He has a set of paintings of birds, because the flight is our eternal desire. He, the painter attracted by botanical career once upon a time, delineates even the wild flowers using a bird’s eye view.

Finishing the intellectual journey, we have some tea. We are sipping it together with Charlie Chaplin, looking down from a collage.

2/2/2011 Budapest

Read more:
vinczellerimre.hu

Born as Pintér, he but wanted another, particular family name. As a wolf growls out of the forest: “Wa-Horn!” Even at the age of 16 he signed his paintings in this way. Images with caption. There were family members engaged in drawing seriously, but he did not learn from them, everything comes from his instinct. His strongest instinct is the sexuality, therefore his pictures tell on this.                                                                                                                                                                            .

“In 1990 I felt to finish my job in Hungary.” That time in Vancouver the cultural issues were the lesbianism, the AIDS, and the oppression of blacks. And the American galleries apply the mainstream.

They angrily rejected the traditional sexuality. “ For me, there is no compromise in art. The art is about the freedom. Even my own ego must not override what I am making. Be the mouse tail a little longer, if it looks better.”

I went to New York, there happens my culture, the future is boiling there. Miles Davis, Jimmy Hendrix started there. At home, I read American literature, the “Apocalypse Now “ told me more than the Hungarian movie the “Cold Days”. Listening blues, I was not interested in the ethnic dance revival movement.

I had to realize that I had to learn English to explain my pictures. I can not be successful without speaking the language of art. The visitor wants to read even at the entrance what is to see. Without this he does not enter. As Tom Wolfe tells in “The Painted Word”, the public is not satisfied with their own experience; rendering of pictures is not enough.

The Klasky-Csupo studio has a great prestige. ‘The Simpsons’ started here. There is a keen competition for a well-paid post, even if the owner himself invites you. In this Hollywood cartoon studio the background drawing people manages the pen in a soft way. “ I had to learn how the lines are fluttering”

We worked solely according to the instructions of the art director. Sometimes I could not resist myself, and I wrote “Wahorn” on the licence plates. I was informed that they hunted for them. I received a warning.

“In Los Angales there is not much energy. What the others made in a day, I accomplished in two hours. The remaining time I drew on post-its. I returned home with ten thousand post-it plates. Said, it is a diary, but not. My daughter called me back.”

“The world changed. The computer won at all. I was learned. For a while I was the webmaster of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Arriving the new media, the time of the paint plus material expired. Not long ago, if you wanted to see what is not at home, you hung up a painting, to be looked for a lifetime. You needed the masters. Today the designers serve the demands. I realized I am not an avant-garde anymore”

“I feel good in the music. Even if painting, I think of the drums of the Siberian shamans. The stretched canvas on the wall absorbs the vibrations of the soul. The energy freezes inside forever. Looking at the paintings and feel vibrating together with the canvas, you will love the picture.” He puts some pieces of timber on the fire. This wood remained of the shed-and-studio, burned down. The rebuilt, spacious part of the house has clay-plastered walls; a single iron stove can heat up.

It could be talked more on the rural tranquility. In the field, transformed to helicopter landing place, Bátor the dog run up and down. “ I plant vegetables only. Last year I had beetroot of such a size. The work in the garden makes me moving well. In the city I would never leave the house.”

15/3/2012 Mezőszemere

Díjak: /State awards: Munkácsy díj (1993) Magyar Köztársasági Érdemrend lovagkeresztje (2007) Elérhetőség: www.wahorn.com