1012 Budapest, Várfok u. 11.
15th. November, 2023 | Wednesday | 18.30-20.30
The event will feature performances by Katalin Kokas, a Liszt Prize-winning violinist and violist together with Dóra Kokas, a violoncellist and prize-winner of numerous international competitions.
“An abstract painting, a painting made up of colours, spots, a pulsation of lights and shadows, delicate layers, lines that fade and then return to themselves, to finally open wide the thousand doors of imagination and set in motion a soaring visual fantasy.” – is how writer and literary translator Henri-Alexis Baatsch aptly describes his thoughts on the works of István Pető.
In line with the sentiments expressed in the aforementioned quotes, the Várfok Gallery is delighted to introduce its newest artist, István Pető, who resides and works in Paris, marking the occasion with his debut solo exhibition. This exhibition represents the most extensive showcase of his art in Hungary to date. István Pető’s art is a combination of the sensual freedom of painting and a profound, meditative formal construction. The contrast between the lyrical and the raw, the blank surfaces that reveal the structure of the canvas, the infinitely subtle colour transitions applied in several layers, the expressive, dynamic gestures and the organic, vibrant forms are projections of a particularly rich inner world that plumbs different regions of the soul in the viewer. In his work, graphics and painting are in constant contact. The focus of his creative process is construction – his lyrical works are in fact the result of a well-structured, step-by-step artistic programme, in which total formal freedom is expressed through orderliness.
István Pető was born in Mezőkövesd in 1955. After graduating in engineering, he continued his artistic studies with Zoltán Lenkey and Ágnes Máger. He later attended the College of Applied Arts, Budapest, moving to Paris in 1984. He further developed his painting at the École des Beaux-Arts. Initially working in a studio adjacent to that of aatoth franyo in the Porte de la Chapelle, he settled in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, where he has lived and worked for some 39 years. He became a member of the Maison des Artistes in 1987.
The lines of István Pető’s early works are reminiscent of the intricate, metaphorical etchings of Béla Kondor. In the 1980s, the human body was his main motif, but even then the line as an element was already prominent in his work. His art organically progresses from the figurative to total abstraction as a result of a trip to India – his human figures eventually reducing to blots and symbols. From this point on, his works create systems of signs that evoke Chinese calligraphy and surrealist, automatic writing, but which do not convey a concrete narrative. At the end of the 1990s, he moved to New York for a year where he painted exclusively and where his attention turned more and more towards interior garden images. This fantastic, fascinatingly expansive inner artistic world is presented in the ’Garden, Now’ series, which makes the metaphorical soul-gardens the artist has explored during his mental walks visible to the observer. His works continue to be connective, bridging the lyrical abstraction that springs from the Western avant-garde and the ancient, spiritual, Eastern tradition, to create an aesthetic compound saturated with dense thought.
His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in France, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Argentina, Taiwan and the USA. His works are also held in important private and public collections.
The exhibition will be on show from the 16th. November, 2023 to the 22nd. December, 2023, between 12.00 and 18.00, Tuesday to Saturday.
