Page 22 - Studio International - March 1974

(Top) Endre Tot
Old rain new rain
(Above and right)
Támas Szentjóby
Happening

notable painter of the surrealist-
constructivist Szentendre Group, Dezsö
Korniss. She learnt to interpret sensitively the
meanings of those colours which find their
raison d'être in flat surfaces. She is aware of the
expressive qualities of a clear outline even
apart from its decorative purpose, and used all
this to create an original and incomparable art. malgré lui character of their work, their photo-realism, yet retaining one distinctive
For her large scale, sometimes embossed intellectual defiance, the thought that their characteristic, a message directed either
pictures she often uses the still easily available paintings came into existence against all odds against those anxious to save the general
textile materials of Hungarian folk art. Hencze, (often in six-by-nine, tiny rooms), creates an public from the 'detriments of art', but not
like Keserü, also turns out large canvases, and i atmosphere of purity around them, which from the detriments of kitsch (see Lakner's
aware of the significance of working in such cannot be expected to surround their luckier enormously enlarged Postcards from the
dimensions. But while Keserü fills her space to western colleagues. Puszta painting), or against those who
express a variety of meaning, Hencze's Often a spirit of negation takes hold of these propound folk culture against other cultures
dominating idea is purity, his primary colour is artists. In 1972 Endre Tot exhibited his (such as his enlarged image of a catalogue-card
mostly white. He rolls his minimal motives `unpainted canvases'. Outlines framed empty from the Ethnographical Museum). Lakner
on to the canvas, often using no more than one canvases — the purest hard edge in a sense — and often depicts political themes, for example
single colour, like clear black that stands away a sign told the viewer the exact size of every newspaper photographs of the Russian and
from the basic white. piece. The sign invited them: 'Imagine my Hungarian proletarian revolutions.
Their talent should secure international paintings'. The oeuvre of László Méhes contains the
prominence for both. Immanent aesthetic The same dilemma has been presented same conscious photo-realism. He aims to
values are strengthened in their work by an differently by Hencze. He set fire to one of his attack the false pathos of social realism
important external factor, the complete lack in canvases and filmed its devastation. The title: (Worker with motorbike) or the adverse
Hungary of material and intellectual conditions Picture in function. However, there are young characteristics of the Hungarian social structure
for the appreciation of this kind of art (no artists turning back to realism. László Lakner (Tepid Water).
architectural culture, no townscape to fit into, began his self-expression using the surreal Of the young sculptors György Jovánovics is
no public with suitably developed visual taste element of magian realism, which he later not afraid to employ even the most banal forms
and no art-market — however much it may be abandoned, craving absolute exactitude. In style of realism, often using naturalistic plaster-casts —
criticized — to help them). The particular his new work belongs to international but always in order to convey substantial
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