Károlyi Ernő festőművész kiállítása (Vigadó Galéria, Budapest, 1992)

This exhibition of Ernő Károlyi is a selection of the rich harvest of the past half-decade. Naturally the presentation of a single period cannot convey a comprehensive picture of the artist's interior progress, evolution of style, and the expansion of painterly imagination during a creative career of four decades. Such an extensive analysis can be made only on the basis of a retrospective one-man show and comprehensive monographic study. So these lines presenting the artist and his work cannot claim completeness, The view of the critic can be animated by the expectation and thrill of the artist's arrival to his present stage, and by aesthetic curiosity: knowing his career up to now, to what extent could the painter realize the fullness of a world evolved and chosen by himself? Moved by critical sensitivity we can state that the artistic task has been fulfilled without fail, with surprisingly high aesthetical standards and a unified and consistent attitude. How could we describe this painting and the high quality it has achieved by now? Borrowing an epithet from Apollinaire I would call Károlyi's painting orphic - or better said, ,,neo -orphic,,. The French poet created that concept applied to Robert Delauney - a model of Károlyi in art - and it suits also himself: ,„... he paints new structures but does not borrow their elements from the visual sphere;,.., The works of the orphic artist offer pure aesthetical enjoyment, a self- evident structure and an exalted meaning, i.e. theme - all at the same time. This is pure art.,, Ernő Károlyi has endeavoured to achieve this „pure,,, abstracted art with its own meaning, „self- evident,, composition and „structure,, during the last two decades. By now he has achieved the indissoluble pictorial unity of all these components, and his painterly means and modes of visual experience are conform to the works' spiritual contents. His creative career was far from smooth and carefree but his purposefulness and self-critical vision have helped him to progress, improve and unfold his art. In the Art College of Budapest where he studied, he learned from several masters: János Kmetty taught him to respect compositional structure, Bertalan Poor to determine the contents, Berény and István Szőnyi gave him lessons in sophisticated and informal painterliness, and taught him to develop atmosphere-creating, sensitive colour schemes. A graduate in 1951, he was a budding artist, He worked as an art teacher but was never merely a „Sunday painter,,. His claim to creativity was realized in landscapes and tradition-respecting compositions; he painted Mediterranean landscapes, cityscapes, the mountains where he travelled: these works helped him to raise his living standards. The question is what has driven Károlyi in the late 1960s and early 1970s to seek new paths beside his well-practised, learned conventional style, and hunt feverishly for pictorial ways and means more suited to his temperament? Art policy in those years in Hungary did not favour abstract tendencies, indeed, the tolerance of different degrees of abstraction depended upon the political climate of the day, Yet Ernő Károlyi chose the difficult path: instead of existential considerations he listened to his inner demands. Guided by the wish of renewal and the compulsion of artistic communication, he opened himself to a trend which suited his artistic make-up. He started with strengthening the interior structure of his compositions, stressed the plane nature of his motifs, and the forceful contours of his figures and objects, picture details transformed to amorphous structures, shifted towards stylization, then toward geometrization. His colours remained broken nuances respecting the unity of keys, This showed Károlyi's respect for tradition: his characteristically Hungarian, post-Nagybánya colour schemes were associated with constructive form-tendencies. In those years he had contributed to his purposefully building oeuvre many high­­standard works, yet the presence of the principle of naturalism, despite its increasingly hidden manifestation, remained the image of reality for visual experience. In the late 1970s collages gave a new impetus to his creative imagination. Engrossed in this technique he did not only produce a special genre within his oeuvre; the expansion of the possibilities of variations of form and handling increased the artist's ingenuity and kindled his artictic imagination. In general, however spontaneous the finding of a different creative method or the appreciation of ingenuity, only deliberate consideration can give artistic validity to aesthetical authenticity. We believe that, regardless of the technical exercices of collage, the artist felt that accents on constructive structuredness, exact articulation and suggestive painterliness cannot go together, they do not mix well, not even on the basis of latent figurativeness. Hence in the early 1980s he relaxed the structural severity of his works, and totally free non-figurativity became a decisive and autonomous world vision. With this metamorphosis of style the colour schemes were also modified: the colours became stronger, varied, vibrating and lively. Károlyi started to model his pictorial world with bolder form-fantasy; he arrived at his present style smoothly, without interruptions. What characterizes Károlyi's art today? With regard to their spiritual content his elements move autonomously on the picture plane, according to the oscillating psychical rhythm of free association. His varied forms - once borrowed from material reality, once the products of free imagination - have regained their plasticity, i.e. they are mostly three-dimensional. The richness of colour ensures their conciseness: their position in space and bodily essence is animated by painterly means. The structural connections of picture elements carry always some emotional or intellectual content: once they have a pleasant dialogue with each other, once they clash but they remain always subordinated to the conceptual order of the picture structure. However, formal virtuosity is far from Károlyi: he does not want to shock people but make them think: the primary tendency of his forms is attraction, not repulsion. His constructions are inexhaustibly diversified, they tolarate even loss of compositional balance if the artistic intention requires it. In the beginning the works were abstracted phenomena on the emotional level of lyrical fullness but by now tension-provoking brushwork-effects have also appeared on his panel pictures. Harder and darker passions, moments offering unusual harmonies amplify his works, and give them several meanings and fullness, Today spontaneous relief and force of imagination are combined with the order-producing severity of aesthetical reflection. These pictures are dominated by ingenuously shaped constructions without the formal fetters of constructivism, their colours are rich without the momentariness of impressionism, the exciting brushwork produces tension along with the careful weighing of proportions. These creative virtues relate Károlyi's work to several directions in universal European art. One of his colleagues may be Manessier with his free treatment of formal order but the relaxed informality of Jean Bazaine may have served also as an example: the colour-culture and arsenal of Giuseppe Santomaso has also its echos in Károlyi's present rich pictorialness. But all these fellow artists indicate only directions. Without any eclectic tendency Károlyi answers his visual problems with growing autonomy, and this makes him original. His works are conceptually pure and comprehensible, aesthetically they are devoid of all frippery and they are increasingly valuable and significant. In brief: they belong to the coloristic trend of expressionism with an artistic content of their own. Instead of trying to solve partial problems the artist wants to achieve totality, and this explains that he is free from formal- or colour constraints. There is only one principle limiting his imagination: severe aesthetical consideration. In this respect, attached to his masters, he is a tradition-respecting, ethical Hungarian artist. Ernő Károlyi has created an authentic pictorial world from domestic traditions, the claim to universal up-to- dateness and subjective creative imagination - and,last but not least, he addresses his fellow -men always in his own idiom. Do we understand his message? Certainly, since his style is elevated, and his opinion of the possibilities of the pictorial world sincerely true. He has already accomplished his objectives, It is worthwhile to accept his special world because it has blossomed out generated by the noblest artistic intentions, to enrich our modern national painting, Endre Aszalós art-historian of the Hungarian National Gallery Ernő Károlyi was born on 17th April 1923 in Pestszenterzsébet 1943-41 he studied furniture-design at the Budapest School of Industrial Drawing 1946-51 he studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest He was the pupil of János Kmetty, Róbert Berény, Bertalan Poor, István Szőnyi

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