Sándor Filep is a versatile artist whose painting and graphic work are complemented by his activities as a musician and performer: he took part in the underground music movement of the 1980s and regularly appeared as a guitarist with various ensembles (Strand zenekar, Electric Petting, Filep Quartett, Fi-Ne Art Ensemble). He lived in Székesfehérvár until the 2000, after which he settled in Balatonalmádi. His paintings and graphic works are characterised by meticulous craftsmanship and a quality reminiscent of the Renaissance masters: his oil paintings, watercolours, ink and pencil drawings, silverpoint drawings and mixed-media compositions evoke both the vanished epochs of art history and the aspirations of modernity. He paints and draws in the manner of Vermeer, Holbein, Dürer and Caravaggio, yet alongside Renaissance and Baroque traditions he applies with great technical skill the tools of Surrealism, Pop Art, Constructivism and Hyperrealism.
The ink-drawing series produced in the second half of the 1970s was given the collective title Epreskerti történetek (Stories from the Mulberry Garden), referring to the setting of the artist’s college studies in Budapest. The works mounted on paper sheets of varying size – ranging from light, linear drawings to compositions exploiting effects of light and shadow through masterful tonal transitions – encompass not only sheets that may be regarded as graphic notes and sketches, but also works executed with extraordinary care and richness of detail. Together, they represent Sándor Filep’s art, which fuses classical sensibilities with a modernist outlook in a compelling synthesis. Strange, ironically grotesque figures appear in these works, embodying or recalling biblical, historical and art-historical phenomena and meanings; and even when they are merely products of the painter’s and draughtsman’s imagination, they nonetheless seem like bearers and interpreters of profound narratives. “His figures are living characters, his scenes depict real, specific events, not mere generalities. We always know exactly what or whom we see on the canvases, what is happening to them, and often we can even read from the works why these things are happening. The method of representation is as novel and exciting as we may expect from modern works of art” – wrote the contemporary art theorist Péter Legéndy about his creations.
Between 1984 and 1998 he drew the graphic sheets (ink, pen) for his series entitled Dürer-emléklapok (Dürer Memorial Sheets), and between 1985 and 1990 he created a large-scale series portraying the residents of the psychiatric institution in Alap (silverpoint, canvas). From the 1990s onwards he produced the sheets of his series Jegyzetek Robert Fludd életéből (Notes from the Life of Robert Fludd), recalling the intellectual milieu of the mystical physician-scholar through surrealist montages combining black ink drawings and coloured watercolours. In addition to his autonomous works, the artist has produced numerous illustrations for Európa Könyvkiadó (Európa Publishing House). In the second half of the 1990s he collaborated on a joint project with the sculptor Miklós Melocco: while Melocco would have designed the architectural and sculptural elements of a chapel-monument commemorating the 1956 Revolution and War of Independence, Sándor Filep would have painted the main altarpiece of the chapel. Unfortunately, the idea – intended for realisation on the central site of the 1956 events, in the garden of the Budapest University of Technology [now: Budapest University of Technology and Economics] – remained unrealised. In 1996 he commemorated the actress Klári Tolnay with a large portrait: in the silverpoint work, the figure of the actress, depicted with an aged face marked by wrinkles, emerges from a background of handwritten text.
In 2011 Sándor Filep also participated in the programme coordinated by Government Commissioner Imre Kerényi, which commissioned compositions evoking key turning points in Hungarian history in connection with Hungary’s new Fundamental Law. Filep’s work recalled the events of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic in a montage-like composition executed in silverpoint. In the mid-2010s he continued to work on historical themes, most often in series: he has been preoccupied with visual formulations of the historical lessons of World War I and World War II, and repeatedly engages with the commemoration and significance of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence. As he stated in an interview: “Every work matures slowly within me. By the time I get to the point where I put something on paper or canvas, a great deal of time has to pass. I would not say that I work quickly – rather little, but I enjoy craftsmanship immensely. After the avant-garde madness, it was the purity of refined art that restored my faith, for there were moments in the 1980s and 1990s when I wavered.”
[2016]