Gudovics Vera festőművész (2000)
It is a young artist of Russian nationality to whom I should like to call your kind and understanding attention. She began her art studies at the Academy of Arts in Moscow, where she was, for three years, a student of Professor Tretyakov. The fact of being a woman has influenced only her career but by no means her way of painting. She interrupted her studies only in order to fulfil one of the most beautiful achievements a woman can get - that of motherhood. When her little daughter was growing up she continued her studies in Hungary at the free painting school of József Szentgyörgyi. And it is here that she has made - in the attraction of Hungarian fine arts - the first steps of her artist's career. It is noteworthy how the world of her paintings has been developing at the crossroads of two cultures. Not denying the Russian roots of her visual beginnings, the academic training which is perhaps more rigorous than ours yet very useful, she managed to combine it with the bolder picture solutions of contemporary European artistic view. The roots, however, help her to avoid getting into the pitfall of artistic licence, and, for the moment, she does not seem to surpass licence, and, for the moment, she does not seem to surpass the borders of figurativeness. She is truly interested in the character of the human figure, its relation to its surroundings in the picture space, the objects around it. This she paints with expressive brushwork, almost fauve-like intensified colours. She is also attracted by the grotesque. This explains that her returning motif is the clown, the somewhat extreme world of the circus. A contrast to this is, however, the harmonically balanced composition of most of her landscapes. She is but at the beginning of her career, and the steps she has made until now can give us hope that she will have not only talent but persistance enough as well, to face the rather hard lot of an artist. Gábor Rideg A borítón: Kártyázó (vegyes technika 70x90, 2000) Cards (mixed technics) GUDOVICS VERA