We report things, unanticipated by our readers, if they heard the word ‘quilt’ (what we generally know in Hungary as ‘patchwork’). It comes to mind, for the most part, bedspreads and pillows, sewn of square-cut colored pieces of textiles, measured out geometrically. “In Lyon, I visited a modern quilt exhibition, where I met an incredibly exciting abstract textile artwork. And I was allured by this world.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           .

“Freshly graduated as DSc, I worked as a researcher in mathematical statistics that time, analyzing answers to sensitive questions along investigations in sociology. After Lyon, my priority order changed. More than anything, modern quilts allured me. I was tremendously eager to do something. After two years, the jury has selected my work for an international exhibition.

I started to create my wall picture using collage technique. I aspired to reach the purity of the visual expression and the composition. Today, I more let my current intuitions to control me.

The figure wandering among old formulas of physics is my mother, a nuclear physicist. In my work I like to use maps, mathematical formulas, a Gauss curve, networks, and writing snippets. The mysterious letters, symbols, formulas mean more than their own. They carry cultural meanings, and even their forms are very beautiful as well.

Thinking first time on it in Egypt, I wished to understand the hieroglyphs. Then I came out if I wanted to understand they completely? It is exciting until I can only guess their meaning. Of course, I did not want to put any unacceptable text into my pictures. Therefore, I took the stunning, festoon-like texts in Georgian, Armenian, Thai, and Khmer from the translations of the Declaration of the Human Rights.

At first I only collected the textiles of interesting patterns. Today I am excited not from the treasures purchased at shops. For weeks, I am painting, varying hues, whitening, rusting, patching dyes: I make my materials alone. In such case I feel like at the high-school Phys/Chem laboratory practice on Friday.

There is a number of ways to fix the material and its form. Who would have thought that you could sew with wire? Knit using paper? Paint to newspaper? But you can meet not only these technical oddities. Our work is affected by experiments, while the color sets of the pictures need a rigid a mature esthetics with strong conceptual background.

Beyond the usual textiles I like the materials of special texture. The “bark cloth” is made of African tree bark. I myself cook paper pulp of rush and reed mace, producing a beautiful, unusual fiber material after casting or dripping.

“At a sale I purchased the entire stock of the basmati paper. After bleaching and washing, I could disaggregate it to fine files. In Korea compressed layers of these papers are used to make clothes because of its good water-repelling properties.”

“At a sale I purchased the entire stock of the basmati paper. After bleaching and washing, I could disaggregate it to fine files. In Korea compressed layers of these papers are used to make clothes because of its good water-repelling properties.”

Current exhibition: hillyerartspace.org

More information: bornemisza.com

Reading the poem ‘Ten Steps’ of Sándor Weöres: “Scatter your treasures – The wealth be yourself. / Wear away your decors – The beauty be yourself. / Forget your amusements – The merriment be yourself. / Burn your books – The wisdom be yourself. / Waste your muscles – The force be yourself. / Rake out your fires – The love be yourself… / Get together your life and death – The completeness be yourself” … and a picture appeared before my eyes, and then I made my first artist book.

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For a later exhibition as well, I got inspiration from the poet Weöres. “The Earth is below you, the Sky is above you, the Ladder is in you” – this is the poem. The short line hidden in a tiny paper box, and several meters long paper ‘ladder’ annexed to the box and hanging below, waited for the visitors.

“It seemed so simple to make letters with cutting, engraving! This makes the text lacelike and enigmatic. I did not count that to prepare an object for exhibition needed a summer to carve.“ Folding out a paper from a simple paper box, we can read eternal messages in Latin: Nec dulces rivi ex fonte effunduntur amaro, that is, No sweet water comes from bitter spring. But, there are other words rolling out: Natura Artis Magistra, that is, The Nature is the Teacher of the Art.

Carved letters have become emblematic. Thus, for the Art Gallery exhibition commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, a 3-m long object was made with this technique, containing Gyula Juhász’s poem “Budapest Autumn”. “Grief” – this was the password of the commemoration, so she selected black textile. For particular reason, organizers of the exhibition gave a black background as well.

The latest versions of her individual technique is the lace-book, when the pattern of the album is given by embossed leaves, pressed between two paper sheets, or, the crochet-book, when the artist’s book consists of crocheted letters. “Once I found a roll of thick sturdy canvas. I cut it to giant folio size, and tissue paper sheets were mounted on both sides. For the bevel-edge pen is sliding better on the paper…

On the pages stitched together with plainwork, there is the Kosztolányi’s poem, the Drunkenness at Dawn. “… Unspeakable over there and far away / they who watched the army of Hannibal / And now are looking at me, who fell here / Standing at a window in Budapest. / I don’t know, what happened to me then / but it seemed a wing fluttered above me / And what I buried long before / The childhood leaned to me.” I even imitated an embroidery, I only need to make the covers…

The book poeticizing the lovers of Balassi (1) is a unique item, too. It was printed using the digitized original, but gilded. Its interesting feature is the classic pairs of the pages with broad margins. It strictly follows the rules of typography. What is the typography? Writing with types. This word of Greek origin expresses the equilibrium of the letters, the pictures, and void spaces. It is a craft but an art as well. Organized by the Association of Hungarian Typographicists ‘TypoSalon’, the exhibition named ‘Typochondria’ has been established in every year, tenth times now. The catalog presenting more than 600 works is a rarity of printing as well.

(1) Bálint Balassi / Hungarian poet 1554-1594

It is predicted that the book will slowly disappear from our life. The Artist’s books are helping us to consider a book, a formatted poem, or a message not only for reading but an interactive artistic experience.

“The glass is always a surprise. Its artistic value is given by its uniqueness, the proportionments, and the relationship of the materials. This cube is made of a specific glass of high refractive index. The light travels at low speed inside the glass, so at the breaking points it decomposes to the colours of the rainbow, later multiplicated inside. Actually, the cube is a mobile sculpture, except that you have to move.”

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There are many different ways to show the beauty of the glass. At the seventies he dealt with Tiffany lamps, but he created lamps of semi-precious stones as well. All of them were jury-accepted. After engaged in the Baroque, Art-noveau, and Art Deco, at the nineties he has got to the abstract geometry and to the sculptures.

“The artist is playing with the glass an optical game. The question is, how you can present the transparency. For example, what can you do with two of sphere quarter? You can work with these for years, because the infinite number of variations.”

A basic idea is followed by a series of modeling. At the end of this process, there is the miracle, what you only hope. Sometimes the result surpasses what you expected. Before the exhibition opening nobody may see it. Anyhow, minute details can exaggerate the interest of the visitors.

If an object has an inscription, it becomes a glass trophy. Since the nineties he creates prizes, either simple ones or sculptures for all kinds of occasions and for all kinds of firms. Recently Spielberg received a prize that I made. A firm as well ordered this speaker.

High level and optical glasses represent a serious value in itself. There are optical glasses of 200 types; each of them has different properties. Special equipment is necessary to process them, mainly used in the industry, when an exact cutting or a perfect surface (e. g. of a sphere) is demanded.

I am thinking of the glass as a sculptor. It must have something to say, without the domination of the inherent beauty of the glass. For me, the simplicity, the form, and the proportions are dominant.

A sculpture of glass not only a nice object but something full of surprise as well. No other material can produce such a spectacular vision, depending on its outside and inside, shiny or matt surface, colour or colourless. That is why that the range of collectors is expanding every day.

11/5/2013 Diósd

„At school, drawing was taught by a nun, graduated from the College of Fine Arts. Once she brought to Budapest, to show me the Fine Arts High School. That first time I saw a woman with rouged lips. For a good time I was afraid of women of red lips.

We used to swim in a spa in Beregfürdő. There was the glass factory. They shoveled the glass debris from the furnaces along the fence of the plant. Glittering colorfully, everyone could bring home big pieces. Hence my attraction for glass originated. During the last twenty years, domestic glass factories closed down. I work from imported glass material. There is an ample but expensive choice. I have got numerous enquiries for lead-glass pictures. I have enough orders. For example, I make color windows for restaurants. One of my windows presents a quite chubby innkeeper; its model was the owner himself. I was careful that he was not fully recognizable.

At the corner, the Corpus consists of triangular prisms. It is a great responsibility to make an ecclesiastic object. It is important what the figures of Jesus and Maria could tell to the man of future.

Who is this person? “Comenius, the great teacher. This will go to the University of West Hungary, Győr.”

“The Hungarian glass fancy goods masters would bring their knowledge to the grave, rather than put the others wise to the expertise. The knowledge must be transferred! Who will repair with lead these windows after 50 years? If I do not train the young people, my works will surely perish. Even now I hold master courses. Although I am really busy. I already organise the day of the Hungarian Painting in autumn, at the day of St. Luke. The rest of my time is preferred to spend with my family. Once my granddaughter was wandering to and fro at the workshop. Finding a little hammer, she asked: ‘Grandpa, may this hammer mine?’ Of course, but, where is this kid? – I realised. And I heard the glass clicking. Well, my life is nice and rugged!”

Outside the rain suddenly stopped. He told (perhaps for frightening) that the workshop had a ghost. Here was a stucco and bronze casting workshop before. The rather ruined building was gradually renovated. Then the Mátészalka Theatre gave a huge order. To produce a 360-square meter coffered wood ceiling was a hard work. The wood panes were randomly in piles. We need more space, so we claimed the chamber in the yard, used for emergency housing lot that time. When the people of the City Council opened the chamber, they found two corpses, of a “clochard” well-known in this neighbourhood and of his hostess. A drama of jealous, as assumed.

Today the room is sufficient and cosy for both glassworks and painting. Yet every year they travel to their favourite place, to Nagybánya. “Once my wife left me on the mountain when I made a picture. I did not notice it, she returned after hours. This picture was made there and that time. It is not usual to make an aquarelle in this big size. I am sure somebody led my brush! Afterward I was surprised with the result and with the size.”

Later we turned over the pages of an elegant publication of earlier times. “Mougins, the small town in Southern France, is a real city of artists. Picasso lived and died here. The altar of its gothic chapel was an altarpiece of Picasso. It was stolen when the town organized an international exhibition of sacred arts. I brought there a triptych of Our Lady and Hungarian saints. Virgin Mary bears the crown of Matyó Marian Congregate girls. I was honoured to be elected to replace the Picasso altarpiece by my work. In hindsight, I think my altarpiece was the heaviest, and the town is thinking the thieves can surely not take it…

10/12/2010 Budapest

Díjak:

Munkácsy Mihály-díj (1984)

Magyar Köztársasági Érdemkereszt (2002)

Budapest is a “spa town” of special atmosphere, having a characteristic bathing culture.“ I was lying at the third floor sunbathing terrace, and I felt again the strange intimacy of the spot. In my childhood our family spent the summer in the Lukács swimming pool. That time we peeked the swimmers across the slots of the baluster railings. One day, just for kidding, my brothers and myself threw water-filled plastic bags down to the pool. We were warned off as pranksters. Twenty years passed since then. In a daze of heat, I looked down to the turquoise-cobalt water. I was dazzled by the colorful swarm of the swimmers, making a mesh of light, gently dancing in the water. Next day I took a small canvas.”

I made 15 large canvasses then, what I stored in our old family cabin, thanks to the lifeguard, my friend. For four years I was at the pool all summer. Before starting painting, I carefully watched the water, constantly in motion, and the swimmers. I almost ‘photographed’ with my eyes the system of the light circles of the golden sunlight. As an adventure, the rays of the sunlight were almost flown from my hand. I imagined the best color of the middlepoint, what I distributed on the canvas aquarelle-like. Shadows were painted softly, and translucently, while the lights strongly.

I painted the seas, the lakes and the rivers all around the word: the diamond-like shimmering sunlight of the Lake Velence, the stormy and luminous greens of the Lake Balaton, the blue sky and the trees in green, mirrored by the silty yellow of the River Rába, the grey and green of the Bosporus with the silhouettes of the minarets, transforming to turquoise fluorescent or bluish opaqueness after storm, reflections of the night Venice lights, the green water-plane of the Aven at the famous Bois d’ Amour, and ice-cold mountain creeks in the canyons of red cliffs in 40-degree heat.

We were nine children, so there was always someone at home. Returning home from the school one day, the door was locked. I sat on the stairs for an hour. When the family got home, I went to the workshop and instead lunch I rasped a key. My father, colorists himself, cried out with a sight of relieve: “this boy will be a goldsmith!” I protested indignantly: I wanted to be a painter! But he said: “In this family we have enough ones learning to paint, you need a normal profession, and later you can be even a painter!”

At the High School of Art we were taught by sculptors. Unlike painters’ class, we learnt form drawing, not light and shade. One day I had to draw a stuffed bird. At its wings, I neatly shaded the feathers. “But boy, it is a picturesque drawing!” – the teacher grumbled. So I went to Ravenna to the painting and mosaic making majors of the Academy of Fine Arts.

My teacher in painting was a follower of Morandi. To start, I painted the model in profile. He praised me with fascination: “ You paint as the great masters”. But I disappointed soon. It is not enough that instead of Renaissance we were working in the mood of Paris masters, but for three months we needed to paint a model, sitting on a sand-colored mattress with a khaki blanket. I told the professor, how about more drapery. The janitor brought me to a military shop, where sand and khaki colored textiles were found. However, I pressed him to purchase some deep red and turquoise silks from an other shop. The prof gasped and rumbled: “ We do not agree. You must not destroy a whole world!” While in the morning everyone outlined the new color scheme, afternoon he made them to paint everything sand and khaki.

After four years and a graduation, I went to Paris to enroll to the Academy of Arts. There was a totally different atmosphere. I started there to deal really with the projection of light and the relationship of the exterior and interior. Sometimes I went back to Ravenna, to observe the Mediterranean sun shining to the walls of the corridor and the floor. Soon I could organize my first exhibition in Paris. For more than twenty years I have had a small atelier in Paris. From the window at the 8^th floor I can see the Eiffel Tower. Here I can do what is the desire of every painter: to create unprecedented, ‘jamais vue’ pictures.

A Híd összeköt. A Hídon mindenkinek át kell menni. A Híd egyben tart.

Április elejétől, június végéig útépítünk. Szó szerint, mert besegítünk. A nagyoknak, a profi útépítőknek. Tanult embernek. Elég jól belejöttünk már tavaly. Szerveztünk, művezettünk, bontottunk, áramot és vizet adtunk… Leveleztünk a hatóságokkal, ha kellett felszabadítottuk az utcánkat… hosszú a történet… Most ponton-hidat építettünk és működtetünk. Amikor jönnek a munkagépek felszedjük a raklapokat, majd visszahelyezzük. Kell a Híd! Könnyű belátni, hogy nehéz eldönteni 160 méteren, hogy melyik oldalon induljon az ember az útnak.

Ez a mi Hídunk. Mi terveztük, mi szereztük. Harcoltunk érte. A munkások és a lakók elnevezték a Sóhajok hídjának. Már megírtuk a Google-nak is. A Hídon mindenki átmegy, akár kell akár nem. A gyerekek oda-vissza szaladgálnak. A biciklivel nehezen boldogulnak, de ez nem zavarja őket. Átküzdik magukat a ritka deszkákon. Érkezik járókelő, aki pozőr módjára le-fel járkál, mert csak így tud telefonálni: a mi Hídunkon. Fel se merül benne, hogy visszhangos az utca, minden szót hallunk. Bár ne hallanánk. Együttérzésből erre járnak a Vári Kutyások is. Ha botladozik ebük a deszkák között, hónuk alá kapják szegény párát, nehogy megsérüljön lábacskájuk. Ki gondolná: egy ilyen Híd közepe, a világ közepe. Innen még egy unalmas utca is fotogén.

Az Országház utca lakói büszkék a Hídra. Szeretik. A sajátjuknak tekintik. Inspirálja őket. Itt jön éppen Horváth Gita írónő. Jó híreket hoz. Ismét készít tusrajzokat.

Budapest, 2013. június 3.

“I extend a line to form a body, transforming it to the space. The Japanese are very competent in it.” Two Grand Prices from Japan and the honoring attention of the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art are proof of that. “Only a few people is handling the glass as artistic material. Those seeing it as raw material produce typically decoration, sculpture-like object, or nostalgic ware. The artist has only sense of ratios, of space, and of forms – and he is looking for a due material.                                                                                                                         .

The ’glass pockets’, made of furnace glass, are invoking exciting moments of our public life. Their titles are characteristic: ’Billegality’, ’Desktop Monument of Bureaucracy’, ’Multipocket-bleeding Country’, ’Wind-oriented Decision’, ’Ill-fated Left Pocket’, ’Award of Great Pouch’, ’See You at the Deposit Desk’.

Glasswork at the furnace needs serious physical strength. It is difficult to handle that weight at the end of the blowpipe. “ It was that two pipes were broken”.

“All values were overturned. The sole certain point in our life is the plumb-bob: its tip is always points down. “ A similar object is hanging above the large conference table of the Guardian Group’s headquarters in Michigan. This group employs 18 000 people in 25 countries, and it has the Orosháza Flat Glass Plant in Hungary.

The Art Lectorate, responsible for ordering public sculptures, officially identified three thematics: an event, a person, and a spatial form. The “nonfigs” made the latter. For the nonfigurative objects something needed to invent, that makes sense to do it.

Every period has its own culture of public sculptures. You could ask, of course, why should have dismantled the glass sculpture at the main square of Salgótarján? This monument commemorated even the glass industry, previously providing livelihood and reputation to the city.

Or, why it had to be removed the light-object of the Budapest-Ferihegy airport? It was an internationally recognized work. Instead they opened there a mall. But, if anything in the art, the light sculpture was a really Hungarian invention. The mural statue at the facade of the Arena Plaza at Budapest had to be removed because it partly covered the advertising canvas.

Laying in the chip-lined coffin devoted to the memory of the victims, none of the workers standing around him laughed, even if the situation was bizarre. It is not trendy nowadays to deal with the work victims. There are 24 thousand workshop accidents per year, approximately. And 100 of these ends with death.

“My life has interwoven with Csepel, part of Budapest. I learned for engine fitter“- he says. Csepel was rated as a stronghold of the socialist industry. He learned here to deal with the metal in virtuoso way, and he started here his career as an artist.

“Without this craftsmanship, I would have become a bad painter”. He spent the summers in artist’s camps, he has become a sculptor, owing to his master, Tibor Csiky.

His exhibition titled “Dedicated to my Master” was timed to the 80th birthday of Csiky. “It is a summary of a personal history”, a visibly playful confession with serious thoughts, as he says.

Fitting in a seriously constructed geometry, mixing of fur-pieces, dowle, pencils, metal chips, other materials generate lyrical effects. Recalling not only the youth skylarking, these objects express the feeling of freedom, when you can afford yourself almost anything, having a mature personality.

In his atelier favorite or characteristic pieces of a given era are found, as samples, especially medals. Round ones, starting to speak as musical instruments, even if made of metal or wood. It is understood that music has an important role in his life.

“Palette of Csontváry” – an eye-catching piece, colored by different metals. “I wanted to prove myself that I am able to secede from the circles. In the last ten years I have worked with triangles. I think that after all these years I can perceive the geometry in a humoristic way, so I use a variety of materials. “

“ I made these glass objects blown in the Tokod glass plant. It is three men’s work. The surfaces were rived by a special procedure. For this reason, these are unique pieces.

There are no enough of medals. New and new exciting pieces are formed, to delight the coin collectors.

6/11/2012 Budapest

Budapest Global Art Walk in the Castle Hill in privat excellent artists in hidden gardens in medieval buildings, with stories, wine and many more challeging things all hail to the art. The first Budapest Global Art Walk will took place on June 13, Saturday.

Buda Castle Hill tops every guidebook’s list of “must-see sights” of Budapest. Buda Castle is the city’s crowning jewel. There is so much to discover within the sprawling Buda Castle and hidden along the cobbled lanes of the city’s historic quarter. (Organized by Balázs Bokor))

Castle Hill has been inhabited since the 13th century, when an influx of new inhabitants took to the high ground there following the Mongol attacks that devastated the population. Buda’s secure position motivated Hungary’s King Béla IV to move the capital from what’s now the regional city of Esztergom to this new site. In the centuries that followed, the district became the home of the royal court, and today you can still see the influences from the rule of King Matthias to the Habsburgs through an eclectic mix of renaissance and baroque styles. There are also traces left from the Ottoman occupation, which we can see scattered around Castle Hill.

Six stops in the program:  KOLLER GALLERY ( the oldest private Hungarian gallery), MUSEUM OF MUSIC HISTORY, GITA HORVATH (an artist, a writer), JÓZSEF GAÁL GALLERY (paiter), BÁNSÁGHI ART STUDIO (generations of artists), KISKÉP GALLERY

(Photo: Klára Oppel)

Our participating artists: Decsi Ilona Luca, Kéri Imre, Nagy Hedvig, Pató Károly

At home it was feared there would be a scandal. I spent the third month in Moscow. That was the strict time of the Brezhnev rule. It was a cold winter, and we lived in a poorly heated dorm. In 1977, I won a one-year scholarship to the Surikov Moscow Institute of Art together with a sculptor. Every day I went to the studio at the corner of the Red Square, I got neither canvas nor paint, of course.                                                     .

Turkmens lived in our neighboring rooms. ‘Try to make linocuts, we give you material and tools’. (I had similar friendly gestures in other times as well). I never made linoprint before; I did not like it, I found so dry and dull. Always a rude Derkovits linoprint on György Dózsa came to my mind. I had not the slightest intention to make linocuts, but I could not do against it. Standing in front of a mirror, I managed to force myself to cut a self-portrait, resembling me somehow.

Working on the linocut, I got the trick of it, I enjoyed the fine thin lines and the large black surfaces. According the old technique, lines indicate the space; the grafitto process applies several layers, scraping back the upper layer where necessary.

It quickly became clear that they know everything about me. To test the system, I told Sasha, Natasha and the other girls amazing and unthinkable things just for kidding. They were very lovable, but, as it turned out, all of my words were passed on.

The tension grew in my soul. At home, they were informed as well. That time Dora Kogan, an art historian from the Soviet Union was studying Csontváry at Pécs, and when she returned, she brought me a suitcase of powder paints. My friends, sending the paints said that there were no problems to recognize me: my fur-coat were unmistakable. The train arrived. All passengers leaving, I stood on the platform in my traditional lace-patterned suede fur-coat. And the elegant lady came to me directly.

“You’re not a typical socialist painter!” – the depertament chef of Lenin head said angrily when reading my applications. For this reason, I never saw the Ermitage in Leningrad.

What is the socialist painting? I never knew it.

An antique shop owner asked the city’s artists to draw pictures of horses. I made 5-6 sketches (“croquis”) when horses moving. In return, I asked these old frames. I restored them, smearing with golden paste.

I work in the old artist’s settlement of Szentendre. At the end of October I move to Budapest, but in spring, of course, I return to Szentendre as soon as possible.

It is a good to smudge the fibreboard! When starting, memories are returning and the fantasy starts. It occurs to me my childhood memories, taking shape the old ladies of headkerchiefs, or the gadgets on the wall of our summer kitchen, revealing the lights and shadows…

22/11/2011 Budapest

Gunshot, then window crashing. A surprising show at an exhibition. Below the glass ceiling of the Műcsarnok, the number one exhibition venue of Budapest, a replica of a typical country house, standard in the sixties. I walk around the tiny house for the third time. On one side, behind the curtain, an old woman is peeking out. At her neighbour, glass clattering: the window was broken by a stone thrown. Turning the corner, at the window of a conceited fancy blue wall a man waves his mobile phone. Opposite him a gunshot. Scenes of the „Another Hungary” exhibition. I am just setting forth when the creator of the „house” appears, a humble man of gray beard, bringing a pot of red fresh geranium. He carefully places it to the old woman’s window, changing the withered one.

We waited a year after the exhibition of his life work to visit him at Mezőszemere. The autumn sowing turns green at huge lands, the rich soil is browning dark. At the Main Street unplastered houses, two rows of brick and a layer of adobe. We meet the postman at the deserted street, dog runs behind her. „Do you see the brown fences? A thatched house. You can find him there.”

There is no row of ready-painted pictures. All items are packed. Only one painting is on the wall. We are just afraid of not seeing the familiar green-rusty-ocher colours with the flaming red. „This is still unfinished. I am painting a series of the icons of my grandmother.”

„I just finished a video installation, so I put away any others. The Vörösmarthy Theater of Székesfehérvár will put on a stage-play, titled ‘Master Class’. It is an imaginary conversation: on the eve of the Day of Music, Stalin and Zhdanov, his culture politician are talking and drinking with Prokofyev and Shostakowitch. Next day both young composer will be sentenced to death.

The director, György Cserhalmi visited my exhibition and he decided to ask me to design the sets. I really enjoyed it. I asked some of the villagers to take part in this work. Helping kindly on the recording, they will poke their heads from behind the ’prison bars’ ”.

He is preparing an exhibition of „The master and his apprentice”. He shows some engravings. „It is a mistake to think that just anyone can be an artist after graduating. When I was 18, I made linocuts, and at age 22 I already had exhibitions. Besides the pictures of my student I will present my early works. In this drawing you can see the start of the abstraction. It needs a restoration, it is torn, I tore it. I have no idea, why.

That time I started to deal with the ’land art’. They did not rely my long hair and my beard. My poor mother had heard a lot about me, but only until one day, when the ’Heves megyei hírlap’, the county newspaper reported my exhibition. For then, I was forgiven. Yeah, if he is an artist, it’s OK.”

„In the eighties I worked at a screen-printing workshop in Budapest. We pressed T-shirts and labels for jeans. Punk was trendy that time. We kept ourselves and we had enough time to do art. These screen prints and lithographs were made that time.”

„The change of the political regime did not mean anything to me.” After two decades, for personal reasons, he moved back home to his village, where everything has changed. The agriculture, ensuring the village’s livelihood before, wasted away. A new look of the earth appeared: apathy, strange gossips, weird plants, clear-cut groves… a land of mysteries’.

Attractive countryside? It is hard to believe. There must be a reason, why an artists’ colony was developing around him, an artistic-intellectual workshop. Artists moved to his next-door, apparently with different motivation. They work as they used to, they have mature style. They are independent artists, respecting the freedom of thoughts; they are defending the environment and their norms together, making the invisible visible.

http://www.campfilm.eu/index.php

Pataki Tibor: “Origami maszkok” kiállításának ünnepélyes megnyitója síppal, dobbal, karneváli felvonulással.

Budapest,  2012. január 26.