The art of János Aknay is intrinsically linked to the constructive, constructive-surrealist current of the 20th century Szentendre school of painting, notably to a group of fellow artists with similarities in style: Lajos Vajda, Dezső Korniss, Endre Bálint, Jenő Barcsay and Pál Deim. János Aknay created geometric paintings, becoming less defined as time passed, which emphasize the forms created from patches of colour, in oil and acrylic on woodblock, wood panel and canvas, as well as on dipped paper. He also created ink drawings and screen prints. His works of art made him an emblematic representative of the progressive neo-avant-garde art group in Szentendre, the Lajos Vajda Studio, which has been active since 1972.
In the seventies Aknay’s compositions, executed with traditional tools and adhering to the traditional painting style, were built from characteristic details and stylized elements of Szentendre’s architecture. From the eighties onwards other motifs became prominent in his art, with symbolic and recurring themes balancing between solid forms and abstraction, themes such as the house, the window, the cross, the puppet and in particular, angels and their wings. In the second half of the eighties and the first half of the nineties, he incorporated Hungarian runic characters in his works. Wedge-like forms and triangles became dominant in his painting. Large blocks framed by sharp straight lines eventually gave way to patches bounded by curving, embracing arcs. Alongside small, medium and large-scale standalone pictures, he often painted large-scale diptychs and triptychs. In addition to his painting and graphic art, he occasionally pursued sculptural activity. A striking example of this is a monumental abstract composition in synthetic resin, erected in 1995 in the town of Szentendre, which displays similar forms as the world of his pictures.
His oeuvre is essentially abstract, constructivist-surrealist, and displays a world without objects, yet sometimes elements of reality do appear in it, such as architectural motifs and requisites related to Szentendre. Latin letters and runic signs with symbolic significance are also prominent building elements of his images. The essence of Aknay's pictures lies in abstraction: the elaboration and representation of a unique system of abstract forms and patches, non-figurative shapes and fields of colour organised in illusionistic spaces, unfolding their expressive power. Within this abstract world, the images depicting angels form a recognisable period not only thematically but also formally. Although the angel appears in some compositions in an extremely modified, simplified and abstract shape (1994 Angyalikon), most of these works depict the human (angelic) figure according to the principles of naturalistic - or perhaps idealized - representation. Already in 1972, early in his career, the motif of the Annunciation appeared in the work of the Szentendre-based artist, and then the evocation of the angelic figure has run as a constant thread through the works of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and is still present in the works created after the turn of the millennium. Aknay regularly returned to portraying the winged, haloed, transcendent being. It appears in his acrylic and oil paintings on fibreboard, canvas, and paper, as well as in pastel and colored-pencil works on paper and in mixed-media pieces - mainly small and medium formats - and in his graphic works, especially his screen prints. The angel’s increasingly central role in his painting is especially notable in the years following 2000.
An analysis of the formal aspects of Aknay’s angel series shows that the artist confronts the viewer with angelic portraits, busts, half figures, and winged beings floating or flying vertically above or in front of outlines of elements taken from cityscapes. The term “confrontation” is apt here, the portraits face the viewer directly, sometimes with mannequin-like facelessness, with a hint of detail, masked, or sometimes with a realistically rendered countenance. Set against a background composed of uniform, monochrome fields or sharply outlined color patches, the body faces the viewer, and is looking beyond the picture. Nearly every picture in the series features the halo encircling the head, and the wings’ broad planes framed by sweeping outlines. The relative compositional uniformity is resolved by the lush variety of colour: the expressive use of burning reds, vivid ochres and oranges, complemented by delicate shades of blues and greens, pushing the boundaries of form, and, in certain works, enriched with gold.
Only the halo and wings indicate the angelic nature of these figures: Aknay does not employ the traditional attributes of Christian iconography (sword, palm branch, flaming sword, banner, scales, trumpet, etc.), nor does he associate his angels with saints linked to them (e.g., St. Matthew, St. Joseph, St. Cecilia) through hundreds of years of tradition. In Aknay’s paintings, the angel always appears alone (only the 2001 Angyal Született [An Angel Was Born] depicts two figures). His portrait-like paintings of angels split with the traditional significance carried by medieval and Baroque representations. Because of the new visual context and their autonomous character, they cannot be identified with the beings of the traditional “heavenly hierarchy,” who symbolize the stages of ascent from man to God: there are no insignia, no cherubim or seraphim, no archangels. The glorious, winged figures evoked by the artist are presumably personal, chosen guardian angels protecting a child. (And this notion is reinforced by the list of works, which often includes the title Őrangyal (Guardian Angel). This stems from the painter's personal fate; the tragic, untimely death of his daughter.) The softly created shapes, which radiate gentleness and serenity, and the slightly tilted, meditative, observant head, which are counterpointed by the sharp contrasts of the colours, also reinforce the guardian-angelic quality.
Analyses of Aknay’s art invariably note that his intentions fit organically into the achievements of 20th-century masters who created landmark oeuvres in the history of Szentendre and modern Hungarian art. Considering the angel paintings, one may recall as antecedents Lajos Vajda’s portraits and self-portraits—such as Álarcos önarckép (Self-Portrait with Mask, 1935), Leányfej (Girl’s Head), Gyertyás lány (Girl with Candle), Fekete ikon (Black Icon), Ikonos önarckép (Self-Portrait as Icon, 1936), and Bohócos (Clown, 1938). The yellow-black palette links Vajda’s Black Self-Portrait (c. 1935) and Aknay’s The Hiding Angel (1996), while the conclusions drawn from Vajda’s compositional style can be seen in Aknay’s angel compositions which bear motives of the cross and architecture, as well as in his masked angel images.
In a conversation in 1999, the painter described his angel theme thus:
"We had a little daughter, Sárika, who died of leukaemia at the age of eight. It was at this time that I started to paint the angel, which is more than an angel, a transfigured child and a spirit that guards, protects and watches. Wherever the angel appears, no great harm can come. It is part of my life, but it is also part of the universe: I was able to make it a public treasure, and thus it belongs, or can belong, to everyone. It merges with my earlier angels. I painted the guardian angel in 1976, spreading its wings over the church and the houses. The main piece of the current exhibition in Esztergom is the Holy Family, above whose Madonna the angel also appears. Its form traces back to the mannequins of Barcsay, Deim, and Balogh. Zámbó and Matyófalvi have also created their own, mine turned out this way—one could say a real Aknay mannequin. The angel as a motif has opened up endless possibilities for me, it allows me to express what I intend to express."
The angel in the art of János Aknay created the possibility of moving away from the mundane, the everyday world, the possibility of crossing over into the spiritual spheres, the transcendental realms. In Aknay's interpretation, this otherworldly figure is never a fallen angel, never the angel of death, but a mediator that the artist can use to draw strength from, and which for him carries the hope of protection, of a shelter from tragedy, of overcoming tragedy, of reassurance, of reconciliation. The winged figure of glory in the paintings of János Aknay, which has been represented in his works over a long period of time, exists in the realm of the spirit, but with a human face, it leads toward God but, through painting, is made palpable and rendered lifelike.
After the millennium, sacred themes became increasingly prominent in Aknay’s painting alongside the angel series. A pinnacle of this tendency was his 2011 altarpiece The Redeemer, painted for the Evangelical Church in Balatonboglár, followed by a composition for the side chapel of the Roman Catholic parish in Kiskőrös. His works also laid the foundation for the collection of the Székesfehérvár Diocese’s Contemporary Art Collection. Between 2010 and 2013, a new ensemble was created in his studio entitled Corpuses, followed by the painting of a series of twelve paintings, depicting episodes from the earthly life of Jesus Christ. This latter was analysed by Márta Nagy in her 2014 book Stories of Silence. In these compositions, Jesus and the biblical characters appear as figures painted sometimes naturally, sometimes in stylized form. According to Márta Nagy's analysis:
"In his stories of silence, the artist lifts the viewer out of the present world not only through angels and colorful, flattened architectural sets. In these works, using the plane-like architecture he ventures to one of the main figures of the world beyond this one: the Son of God himself. Compared to his earlier representations of transcendence, this is a newer branch in his oeuvre, partly lighter and partly heavier. For, by virtue of his dual nature, the Son of God embodies both worlds. The task is also made more difficult by the fact that the painter wishes to depict Jesus Christ who belongs to both, in one of them... The two types of transcendental imagery are brought together in this cycle, i.e. he uses constructions spread out in a plain and figurative motifs together, thereby advancing the conceptual depth of his work.'
Alongside the biblical ensemble, Aknay has continued to create mostly large-scale paintings rooted in the constructive tradition of Szentendre, and architectural motifs exploiting the expressive power of color. These works are based on stylized architectural elements, sometimes evoking real forms, sometimes reduced to geometric shapes: the compositions of patches, which evoke wall surfaces, towers, gates and windows, blocks, are shaped into tight structures through the enigmatic transitions and juxtapositions of illusionistic spaces and planes.
In his introductory essay to the book Az emlék jelene (The Present of Memory), published in 2015, art historian Ernő P. Szabó, reviewing the artist’s more recent works, observes that these works are “built from large, uniform color fields, fitted together or intersecting along sharp, straight lines, which only faintly recall the basic forms of Szentendre’s gates, walls, towers, and facades. The pictorial space cannot be considered a depiction of actual space, as at times we see a Renaissance-style vanishing-point perspective in one element, but this only signals the spatiality of that single element, while the placement of other elements suggests different viewpoints; the specific spatial effect of the work arises from placing the planes in front of each other. These works simultaneously display a sense of liberation, inner serenity and harmony, and in contrast, drama and tension, which is no small thing for anyone who has followed the state of contemporary Hungarian art, including Aknay's career, his human fate and his struggles as an artist and art organizer. At times, as in music, we may feel a true ‘jam session’ in a work, with all its beauty and the fleeting elements born of free, unrestrained improvisation. In other works, the tone turns heavier and more dramatic—hardly by accident, since the changes that have taken place in Hungarian reality could not leave him unaffected, neither as a person nor as an artist.”
In depicting these compositions, alongside the motifs themselves and in organic harmony with them, the palette used remains paramount—a point the painter himself has stressed in connection with his biblical works:
– I consider color the essential element of my painting. Color is life; as Goethe said, the origin of color is light. This is why it is so well suited to pointing beyond visible reality.
[2016]