Gábor Marosvölgyi

Career path of Zsuzsa Péreli

Her fate and career were almost predetermined by her artistic heritage, as her family was deeply imbued with creativity and maintained a close connection to the world of art. Her grandfather, the visual artist Imre Pérely, was a friend of writers and poets during the interwar years, while her mother, the writer Gabriella Péreli, was regarded as a central figure in Budapest’s artistic circles of the time. Yet her path did not lead straight to her later successful artistic career.

The childhood years spent in the company of artists and intellectuals in Budapest’s cafés were followed by early employment: she worked as a cleaner when needed, and later at the Budapest History Museum as an assistant restorer and technical draughtswoman. Alongside her continuous work, she completed her secondary education at evening school, earned a qualification in ceramics, and attended various independent art schools. She was particularly active in the courses of the Dési Huber Circle and the Postás Cultural Centre, where she studied under, among others, the painter György Zilahy.

Her affinity and talent for visual arts took an unexpected turn when she met the tapestry artist Hédi Tarján, who opened her eyes to the artistic power of expression inherent in tapestry and weaving — crafts that, during the socialist realist era, were largely regarded as mere elements of interior decoration but in fact preserved centuries of tradition. As her private student, she thus became both a successor to the Hungarian tapestry art represented by Noémi Ferenczy and to the legacy of 15th-century Flemish weaving workshops.

Armed with this knowledge and outlook, she was admitted in 1969 to the Academy of Applied Arts, where she studied until 1974. Her student years were not without tension, as the art she represented was considered by the cultural politics of socialist realism to be too historical, too artistic, and too conceptual.

After completing her formal studies, in 1975 she and several like-minded applied artists founded the Manuál Group, which sought to combine traditional methods of craftsmanship with modern principles. The group remained active until 1984 and included Mariann Bán, Márton Horváth, Vladimir Péter, Zsuzsa Péreli, Anna Szilasi, and Júlia Szilágyi. During their existence they presented numerous group exhibitions and also functioned as a creative workshop, often pushing the boundaries between artistic genres. This spirit of experimentation continued to characterize Zsuzsa Péreli’s art in later years as well, always accompanied by a deep mastery of technique and meticulous attention to detail. From the very beginning, she not only designed but also wove her tapestries herself — the result of months or even years of work carried out with monastic dedication.

Even at the beginning of her career, she frequently drew upon diverse visual media as sources of inspiration — among which archival black-and-white photographs played the most important role. The rigid, ceremonial poses, the monochrome palette, and the occasional blurriness or exposure flaws lend these photographs an abstract quality that, due to their historical distance, becomes symbolically detached in our perception. She made use of this phenomenon in her 1970s series portraying actresses (Emília Márkus, 1973; Sarah Bernhardt, 1977; Asta Nielsen, 1978), where the subjects, drawn from the worlds of theatre and film, appear not as autonomous individuals but rather as mediating presences. Yet, due to the nature of tapestry as a medium, the imagery suggests further internal layers — even existential dramas. This intermedial relationship is further enriched by intriguing compositional solutions such as the use of the border — traditionally a framing device in tapestry art, but here also serving as a conceptual reflection and commentary. In connection with this, but also within the main composition itself, she introduces materials unusual or rarely used in textile art — for example, in Asta Nielsen (1977), guinea fowl feathers arranged using a technique derived from South American Indigenous featherwork. In the context of the theme, these simultaneously allude to feminine costume, transformative magic, and decorative disguise.

From the very beginning, the philosophical and poetic use of the possibilities inherent in the technique has been a defining characteristic of Péreli’s tapestries. An early example is Amnézia (Amnesia) (1980), which won the Grand Prize at the 6th Wall and Spatial Textile Biennial. The double-sided relief tapestry, framed in red wood, depicts on one side a female figure on the front and a male figure on the reverse, while on the other side the same composition is repeated in reverse. A similar use of the tapestry’s two sides can later be observed in Motolla (Yarn Swift) (1987). The award-winning work, followed by her 1981 solo exhibition at the Vigadó Gallery, marked Zsuzsa Péreli’s true debut in the Hungarian art scene, where she has remained a constant presence ever since.

Alongside her technical experimentation and engagement with personal existential themes, the problems, dramas, and values of history and communal life form another guiding thread that organizes Péreli’s oeuvre. An early sign of her growing awareness of national and cultural identity can be seen in Három testvér (Three Brothers) (1978), where the three children dressed in traditional folk costumes are rendered metaphorical by a border woven in the colours of the national tricolor.

A grand representation of this idea is 1982's Visszajöttek a zenészek (The Musicians Are Back). The tapestry of musicians from Maramures is also based on a photograph. More specifically, it was inspired by a photograph that was featured in a Bartók memorial exhibition. It was from this point that the lifelong influence of Béla Bartók can be traced, which runs through Péreli's oeuvre, both on the surface and as a diving path, and was most visibly expressed in his composition Napút-Holdút, hommage à Bartók (Sun Road-Moon Road, Hommage à Bartók) (2005-2006). In the original photograph, the musicians appear without a background, while in the woven image they are positioned in front of a wall, with the peaks of the Transylvanian mountains rising behind them, or as a continuation of the wall. By creating the background, she has in fact created a context. The ragged musicians of different nationalities, playing together, are the embodiment of an attitude that culturally redraws the borders of a politically fragmented Hungary: what is important is not what divides, but what unites!

The present, seen from the historical past, is the dominant perspective at the beginning of her career. The melancholy of passing away permeates her work entitled Egy kercaszomori búcsú emlékére (In Memory of a Kermess in Kercaszomor) (1978), in which the compositional solutions of rural family photographs and embroidered wall hangings reappear with a touch of irony. In contrast to nostalgic sentiment, her work entitled Szolgálati idő emlékére (In Memory of a Term of Service) (1984) focuses on the manipulative techniques of power that beautify the past. The analogy here was provided by wartime memorial plaques that once decorated the walls of rural homes. In the centre of the tapestry, the soldier’s arms merge into the hilly landscape surrounding him, where the burning roofs of torched villages allude to bombardments and the struggles fought in the trenches, while branches and leaves sprouting from his body suggest the hope of new life. The private drama of history, war, and peace continues to resonate in Péreli’s art; even in 1990, it reappears in her tapestry Melankólia (Melancholy), now complemented by the motif of the world tree.

The brownish tones of early 20th-century postcards inspired a series of tapestries woven in the 1980s, in which Zsuzsa Péreli, driven by an almost archival passion for preserving values, created lasting memorials to once-iconic buildings, locations, and the “happy peace times”. Among these are three tapestries commissioned by the Hungária Hotel in 1985 — A Nemzeti (The National Theater), A Keleti (The Budapest Keleti Station), A Stefánia (The Stefánia Street) (1985) — as well as Régi pesti képeslap (Old Postcard from Pest) (1983).

A memento of the constant struggle between the loss and preservation of values is one of Péreli’s most personal wall tapestries, her first framed textile piece, Greeting from Felsőszenterzsébet (1983). In the centre, following the iconography of Madonna images, appears the “Patron Saint of Monuments”; in the background undulates the hilly landscape of the Őrség region, while the female figure holds a small house in her palm. This sky-blue house was discovered by Zsuzsa Péreli herself, who, together with friends, intended to purchase it as an artists’ retreat. The plan, however, never came to fruition, as the building was demolished in the meantime. Yet the idea of creating a home, and the hope that benevolent forces exist in the world, remained preserved within the work. From this concept and from the image of the female saint later grew the Madonnas and angels that populate her oeuvre. Nonetheless, Péreli was eventually granted her own place of refuge — a small, personal haven in nature in Tahitótfalu, in a garden house converted from a former vintner’s dwelling. The inspiration drawn from this environment would unfold in the second half of her career, marked by an increasing number of landscapes and representations of trees. In 1997, at her exhibition Gobelin-liget, gobelin-kert (Gobelin Grove, Gobelin Garden) held at the Ernst Museum, the plants and flowers from her own garden were brought together with her works in a special installation concept, uniting art and nature within a single space.

A vintage photograph likewise served as the point of departure for Péreli’s Korcsolyázók (Skaters) series, spanning nearly two decades — a poetic and intimate portrayal of the spiritual dimensions of human existence. The skating couple depicted in the original photograph became a recurring motif in the series, with only their surroundings changing from work to work: Korcsolyázók (Skaters) (1986), Korcsolyázás angyali segédlettel (Skating with Angelic Assistance) (1990), Szabadkorcsolyázás (Free Skating) (1997), and Korcsolyázás Szent Iván éjjelén (Skating on Midsummer Night) (2003). The inseparable unity of the two figures evokes a deep sense of belonging, while the playful, unrestrained movement of skating itself becomes a symbol of spiritual freedom and harmony with the world. Within their environment, signs of the spiritual dimension emerge — sometimes explicitly, sometimes concealed.

The playful appropriation of the world is an aspect of childlike existence, and thus childhood naturally found its place within Péreli’s oeuvre. However, this theme does not draw on Péreli’s personal memories, but rather takes shape as a construction filling a void — a childhood prosthesis composed of applied fabrics, ribbons, and objects, as in the composition of Aranykor (The Golden Age) (1986), or as a reminiscence of a paradisiacal state, as seen in Föld és víz (Earth and Water) (1979). In the latter, the little boy playing by the seaside — preserved and frozen in a photograph — comes to life again within the organic weave of textile threads.

By the late 1980s, in parallel with historical changes, a need for reflection and existential summation emerged in Péreli’s work. The basis of Motolla (Yarn Swift) (1987) is a “found object” discovered in an attic in Őrimagyarósd — a tool once used for measuring warp threads. Thanks to Péreli Zsuzsa’s passion for collecting, her home has always been filled with objects, “things”, which often become sources of inspiration or even physical components of her works. This process is most directly visible in Motolla, where the object itself becomes the foundation and carrier of the artwork. In this technically masterful piece, the thread stretched across the winding spokes reveals eight different stages of human life – cradle, childhood, youth, marriage, old age, and death – like a medieval Wheel of Fortune. The small bell warning of the thread’s unwinding marks the rhythm of life and death’s eternal cycle.

The themes of existential being and identity coalesce into a distinct body of work whose common denominator lies in the exclusive motif of portrait heads, the technique of leaving the warp threads exposed, and an underlying tone of irony. The earliest of these, Lakók jegyzéke (Register of Residents) (1986), also originates from a “reused” object — the frame of an apartment building’s nameplate holder. The architectonic structure evokes the idea of a dwelling, while within it, the residents’ portraits appear with the impassive expression of ID photographs. Its monumental counterpart could be the work entitled Ikon, XX. század vége (Icon – The End of the 20th Century) (1987), where human faces hang suspended in midair like marionette puppets. The shift is not only in scale but also in meaning, for the work grows into a universally valid statement — now speaking of the register of humankind itself. When in the 2000s, these faces floating on warp threads reappear, the focus turns toward the search for identity. In the paired tapestries Vágyakozás I-II. (Longing I–II) 2006), the previously isolated heads acquire emotional resonance through the dialogic nature of the two parts and subtle variations in composition. In Eredeti kópia (Original Copy) (2007), the individuality and quality of the character conveyed by the face are called into question within monochrome–colour portrait pairs.

Around the turn of the 1980s and 1990s emerged the group of icon-inspired works that form the most cohesive unit of Péreli’s oeuvre (e.g. Gyermekmadonna [Child Madonna], 1986; Mária [Mary], 1990; Tahisi Madonna [Madonna of Tahi], 1994, etc.). The foundational experience came from a shaft of light falling upon a Madonna icon in a dimly lit Orthodox church. The hieratic composition, imbued with historical depth and sacred power, creates a compelling focal point in these works and endows the motifs and objects drawn into their force field with a timeless, enigmatic quality. Furthermore, due to its devotional associations, the tapestry itself oscillates in the viewer’s perception between an object of veneration and a work of art. In Blessed Lady (Boldogasszony) (1987), the inclusion of votive offerings – among them a map of Hungary – expands the work’s scope beyond the sphere of art toward that of a miraculous, magical object. Meanwhile, Reliquary (Ereklyetartó, 1988) incorporates the exhibition catalogue of the artist’s grandfather as a relic within the piece, thereby affirming the continuity of artistic creation across generations within the family.

Unusually for Zsuzsa Péreli, in 1989. Karácsony (Christmas 1989) (1989-1990), she reflects directly on the current political events of the late 1980s, and for this reason it has a shocking authenticity. At the same time, its archaic icon form makes the historical experience timeless and thus symbolic: the experience of the Romanian revolution of December 1989. Beneath the metal-encrusted Hodegetria-type icon that occupies the centre of the picture, only a black cloth is visible instead of the faces of the Virgin and Child. Among the golden threads are small metal objects: bullet casings, pins, Romanian coins, keys (numbered 56), a fish-shaped baking mould and parts of a telephone receiver. The work is in fact an anti-icon, since unlike icons, its surface is covered not with things of desire or value, but with shameful relics of a system. The black fabric that replaces the faces of the Madonna and Child also emphasises that the tapestry is a memento of mourning and historical trauma.

Based on its historical context and iconography, 1999. Húsvét (Easter 1999), woven a decade later, can be regarded as the companion piece to the afore-mentioned tapestry. By naming both works after church holidays, the artist herself emphasises this connection. Yet while the earlier work conveys closure and the hope of renewal, the piece created ten years later reflects a disillusionment with those earlier hopes. Its sorrowful inspiration was the bombing of Novi Sad, alluded to by the burning grey houses in the background, while the Madonna’s mantle is weighed down by coins symbolising the burden of the material world. This striking formal solution had already appeared in the tapestry called Szegény angyal (Poor Angel) (1997), which belongs to the “angel section” of Péreli’s oeuvre. It reveals how deeply the iconographies of the Madonna and the angel are intertwined in Péreli’s art, representing two manifestations of the same spiritual force.

The use of actual objects woven into the warp threads reaches its most shocking form in Tájkép – XX. század vége (Landscape – The End of the 20th Century) (1990). Here, the tapestry’s threads incorporate flattened bottles, tubes, syringes, and other accumulated waste, enclosing an idyllic landscape. As a result of this compelling compositional approach, the objects – otherwise familiar parts of our daily lives –are perceived as threats, as dangers that seem to engulf nature itself. Thus, human presence, or at least its contemporary, consumerist form, becomes toxic.

A key feature of Péreli’s art is that, despite experiencing historical traumas and witnessing the flaws of humankind, she never succumbs to utter disillusionment. Her works consistently bear witness to a faith, a conviction, or a form of testimony. This is most clearly expressed in her pieces dealing with the theme of nation and homeland — above all in her tapestry Himnusz (Hymn). The circumstances of its creation date back to 1996, when, in connection with the millecentenarial celebrations, and at Zsuzsa Péreli’s initiative, eight tapestry artists each created a work inspired by Ferenc Kölcsey’s Himnusz (Hymn). On the left, a sombre landscape shows signs of devastation, while on the right, a sunlit pastoral scene unfolds with rolling hills and grazing sheep. At the end of the road – through a Gothic gate of clouds divided by seven pairs of columns, interpretable as symbols of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Cardinal Virtues – the viewer’s gaze finally reaches the divine radiance.

This compositional structure of the landscape – rigorously divided by rows of trees or columns into symmetrical sections – recurs in several of Péreli’s works (e.g. Csend [Silence], 1992; Átjáró [Passage], 2002). In these tapestries, the spatial sense of the nave of a Gothic cathedral is transposed onto the landscape, in harmony with Baudelaire’s metaphorical concept of “Nature as a Temple”. Among these, Napút-Holdút. Hommage à Bartók (Sun Path – Moon Path. Hommage à Bartók) (2005–2006) stands out for its multilayered semantic richness. Created for the Béla Bartók Memorial House, the tapestry serves as a kind of essence of all that Béla Bartók represents for Zsuzsa Péreli. We see a double row of cypress trees, along which the path divides into two directions: one leading toward the darker hues symbolising night, the other toward lighter tones representing day. At the end of these paths stand a woman symbolising the Moon and a man representing the Sun. It is as though the philosophical idea underlying Himnusz (Hymn) – formed around the notions of nation and homeland – were here rewritten into a natural-philosophical vision: that the substances constituting the world are united in humankind and guided by cosmic forces; that the material and the spiritual paths both lead to, and emanate from, the human being – just like Bartók’s music and spirit, which unite the national and the universal values.

The cosmic character of nature becomes particularly pronounced in Péreli’s works from the early 2000s. In Asha (2007–2008), for instance, we perceive a landscape representation of eternity –the changing of the seasons and the stages of human life condensed into a single frozen image. It seems to suggest, echoing the thought of Béla Hamvas, that only a person living in harmony is capable of embrace the fullness of nature.

From the 1990s onwards, a distinctive type of nature depiction also appears in Péreli’s oeuvre – works that are only loosely connected but could be described as metaphysical landscapes. Their shared characteristic is that a specific element of nature becomes a gateway between the material and the spiritual worlds. In Égi parton (Sky on the Beach) (1993), for example, this is a seashore where a solitary figure sits beside fragments of a pillar, while the horizon almost merges with the sea. A larger perspective unfolds – that of a human being frozen in timelessness, seated on the shore of history. In Kitekintés a hihetőből (Glimpse Beyond the Believable) (1993), created in the same year, two figures stand at the edge of a checkered terrace, leaning against a balustrade. The “games” and scenes of human life are behind them, their gaze lost in the moonlit sky, their blurred figures slowly dissolving into a state of contemplation, or themselves becoming stiffened into barrier pieces.

Péreli's windows perform a similar gateway function, for example in Éjjeli Nap, nappali Hold (Night Sun, Day Moon) (1998), a window overlooking the day opens onto the evening sky, as in a modern creation myth. The Pompeji Ablak (Window of Pompeii) (2000) breaks through the intense background of the wall colour, also known as Pompeii red, to a landscape, as if this time looking out on the material world through the mist of a pagan ritual, from the perspective of the mysteries.

The memory of Pompeii, buried by the volcanic eruption, pops up in other metaphysical landscapes. The main figure of Musa Aeterna (2004), the “eternal muse”, is modelled on the ancient figure of a Bacchanalian woman in a Pompeii mural, dancing on the chequered stone floor seen earlier, pulling away the “tapestry of heaven”, beyond which a golden background shines, i.e. standing on a porch of day and night. Her figure is a fusion of pagan joie de vivre and Christian mysticism.

In the years 2001–2002, a body of work emerged that is difficult to classify either by genre or theme, yet it could most fittingly be placed among these metaphysical landscapes – though the term surreal landscape would describe them just as well. This is the Déjà vu series. These compositions, created through collage and montage techniques – in keeping with the series title – reintroduce fragments of Péreli’s earlier works in the form of cut-up reproductions, complemented by various papier-mâché sculptures moulded while wet and then dried. The imaginative, playful and decorative pieces depict the workings of memory constructed from fragmented recollections.

The Axis Mundi (2010–2011) could almost serve as an emblem of Péreli’s cosmic view of nature. Here, two intertwined twin trees form a shared world axis, reminiscent of Csontváry’s cedars. The circumstances of the tapestry’s commission are symbolic as well: it was ordered for the former Pauline–Carmelite monastery in Sopronbánfalva, to be placed in the novices’ hall, in the position of an altarpiece. It was inspired by the four-hundred-year-old carved wooden beam supporting the hall’s ceiling. At the centre, in the hollow between the two trees, shines a golden heart (the Heart of Christ), made from the threads bequeathed by the last prioress of the Carmelites who had served there. The mythological pagan archetype takes shape as a mystical Christian vision, and the duality of the trees likewise reflects the reconciliation of opposites. The mirrored structure of branches and roots evokes Hermes Trismegistus: “as above, so below” – that is, the physical laws follow the cosmic ones. All this complex content is realized in a clear, expressive and powerful form, free from all ornamentation. Every detail forms an organic part of the whole: the trunks, branches, and roots resemble arteries within the chambers of a single great heart, while the undulating lines of the foliage continue into the clouds of the sky and the rolling slopes of the hills.

In the most recent major section of her oeuvre, the Angels series, the Madonna icons merge with cosmic representations of nature. Although the motif of the angel had been present in her art from the very beginning – for example, in Korcsolyázás angyali segédlettel (Skating with Angelic Assistance) (1990) –, from the late 1990s onwards it clearly came to the forefront and gained in significance.

One of the first works of this kind is Szegény angyal (Poor Angel) (1997). In this large-scale tapestry, an angel hovers above grey concrete buildings, suspended on the freely left warp threads. Its robe is composed of coins once in circulation in the former COMECON countries – money for which people once worked hard, now rendered worthless ballast. It thus becomes a symbol of the appropriation and devaluation of values and lives exposed to political systems. The angel’s figure also evokes late Gothic depictions of the Crucifixion: the soul is nailed to the material world, held down in the dust by the power of money. This work brought Péreli international recognition: in 1998, Michèle Giffault, the director of the Aubusson Tapestry Museum, selected it for an exhibition she was then curating. Thus Péreli’s angel met its medieval tapestry predecessors in Aubusson, the French town considered the capital of textile art.

Péreli’s other monumental angel-themed work, Aequilibrium (2000–2001) – “balance”– was created specifically for her solo exhibition in Aubusson in 2001. The angel, floating between heaven and earth on golden threads, releases a blue thread upward, toward the sky, while a red thread held in its other hand ties it to the ground. It seems to reflect on the condition of the Poor Angel, bound to the material world, suggesting the possibility of achieving harmony between the spiritual and the earthly realms. The technique of leaving the golden warp threads loose truly evokes a sense of levitation, while the radiance of the gold lends the angel a sacred glow reminiscent of the golden backgrounds of icons.

A series of angels accompanies the first two decades of the 2000s like a protective army. In 2012–2013, Illuminatio is completed by the motif of a celestial tree; in 2016 came Ne féljetek (Do Not Be Afraid!), in which, unlike the classical serenity of the other angels, the figure depicted from behind moves with baroque dynamism, as if it had just arrived or were about to depart. Then, in 2019, Az utolsó angyal (The Last Angel) was completed, gazing through a window opening onto the sky toward a chessboard-patterned landscape unfolding below.

The tapestry Materra (2023) can also be seen as a summary or an exciting new genre experiment, where an idyllic landscape unfolds against a golden background in the silhouette of a Madonna icon. As a combination of iconic imagery and metaphysical landscapes, it is as if the Madonna icon itself became a gateway to an idyllic world, or the landscape itself was anthropomorphised and sacralised. The title is also revealing, combining the Latin words “mater” (mother) and “terra” (earth) in the meaning of mother nature, mother earth, motherland. However, the world revealed through it is not abstract, distant, metaphysical, but very much earthly, material, and it is no coincidence that the words “mater” (mother) and “materia” (matter) have a common origin in Hungarian (“anya” for mother and “anyag” for matter). It is just that this earthly landscape is free of toxins and traces of human violence: it is as beautiful as it could be if we would let it be.

[2024]

Asta Nielsen

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