In the early phase of his career in Nagyvárad (Oradea), Jakobovits produced a large number of pen drawings, characterised primarily by surrealism and grotesque visions. His world of motifs is drawn from the life of the theatre and the circus: clowns, harlequins, and mannequins populate his sheets of paper. These figures can be traced back to his immediate theatrical experiences, to a world in which he had felt at home since childhood.
Throughout his primary creative practice as a painter, drawing remained a constant companion, functioning as a means of collecting experience, self-formation, and a fundamental instrument of visual thought.
Even in works produced in the early years, one can already sense that colour becomes primary for him – a striving that reaches fulfilment in his later works. Through colour, he seeks to convey certain psychological and spiritual structures. It was during this period that his painting Lányok, fiúk (Girls, Boys) was created, conveying the essence of modern music and of youth imbued with freedom and carefree abandon.
Within the various tonal ranges of colour, he searches for certain types, maintaining that particular colour compositions and pairings are suitable for conveying specific characters. The figures relate to reality only in a limited sense; they may be regarded as types of certain situations. They are abstractions of real figures, and thus abstractions emerge on the canvas through colour, form, line, and tone. From a very young age, he explored the affinities of colours and the effects generated by their nuances and playful variations. This is not an end in itself; through it he seeks to convey the inner intimacy of forms. He firmly rejected the assumption that his works depict caricatures or caricatured people, since he does not portray individuals but situations. Among his important works are: Manökenek II. (Mannequins II),1970, ink on paper; A bohócok (The Clowns), 1966, ink on paper; Dicsőszentmártoni rajz (Drawing from Târnăveni), 1974, ink on paper; Jelenet (Scene), 1969, ink on paper; A létrán (On the Ladder), 1972, ink on paper; Akrobaták (Acrobats), 1966, ink on paper; A színház (The Theatre), 1966, ink on paper.
During the period of dictatorship, when the official expectation was the glorification of the Party and the triumphant depiction of the workers’ society, opposition to power could take shape only in this manner. In the grotesque he found the possibility to ridicule the absurd demands of an arbitrary and duplicitous society. In this period, and motivated by these impulses, he created the series made with the residents of the psychiatric institution in Dicsőszentmárton (Târnăveni), which also served as illustrations for Imre Horváth’s poetry volume A sárga ház (lit. The Yellow House). At the same time, he depicted the dictator couple in grotesque forms in his paintings A nagy protokoll (The Grand Protocol, 1973) and Diplomaták (Diplomats, 1973), followed in 1987 by his book Néró papírmaséból (lit. Nero Made of Papier-Mâché), in which he portrays them with biting irony.
This period (1960–1970) also saw the creation of his urban scenes. These works are characterised by distortion and stylisation, by elongated bodies and faces that fundamentally suggest loneliness.
His still lifes were created in the spirit of metaphysical painting. This influence can also be felt in works such as Hangszerek (Musical Instruments), 1966, oil on canvas, Relikviák (Relics), 2010, oil on pressed board, or Kék-lila rapszódia (Blue–Purple Rhapsody), 2010, mixed media on pressed board, which, similarly to the painting of Giorgio Morandi, are characterised by balanced colour and the calm radiating from their compositions. He builds his compositions from few elements; they are formally purified, their objects placed in a neutral space, with at most a plane suggesting the height of a tabletop. Although he convincingly conveys the weight and mass of the objects, they sometimes evoke a sense of floating. He painted an entire series featuring blue glasses and objects inspired by the ceramic works of his wife, Márta. The wondrous blueness of the vases and their peculiar atmosphere inspired these works. In this series, he was interested in the special atmosphere of blues: the play of manganese, turquoise, cobalt, and ultramarine. He believed that through shades of blue, objects radiate a secretive, mysterious, and magical atmosphere through which something new can be said about them. In his still lifes depicting glass and ceramic objects, the objects are transfigured; time seems to stand still around them, lending them a lyrical, metaphysical tone.
Although his subject matter is extremely varied – urban still lifes, figurative compositions, portraits – in his paintings he always seeks the content and relations of meaning behind the visible. He condenses the depicted figures’ momentary psychological states into the work in a way that generalises them.
Jakobovits believed that for painters, colour, form, and tone are the primary means of expression, and that these must be played with in the same way a composer plays certain instruments. Only through colour can warmer moods or more piercing cries be brought into a picture.
In 1962, he participated in an artists’ camp in Casimcea village, Dobrudzsa (Dobrogea), where the sight of impoverished landscapes and houses left a deep impression on him. He was particularly captivated by walls, on which “windows appear like patches on clothing”, offering possibilities of geometric and rhythmic line construction. In this period, his brushwork changes; he applies thick, pastose layers to the canvas.
After 1961–1962, he increasingly used darker colours with cold or warm dominance, reducing elements of linear perspective to a minimum. In this way, he brought to the fore the structure, force lines, and tensions of forms. The reduction of natural forms to a minimum, or their complete absence, becomes characteristic.
The character of his landscapes was also strongly shaped by his journey to Armenia, where arched structures, towers, and geometric constructions frozen into timelessness became defining motifs. He developed a distinctive system of codes in which the dialogue between passing time and static timelessness or eternity radiates through the association of warm, earthy hues, browns, and ochres. Emblematic works from this period include Örmény táj (Armenian Landscape) and Tájkép (Landscape, painted in 1974), which condense the particular spiritual world of the Armenian people into lyrical geometric forms.
In 1965, he saw an exhibition of Henry Moore in Bucharest, which had a profound impact on him; encounters with major European artists and works fascinated him and opened new horizons for artistic expression. He visited the great museums of Russia and Europe, where he admired the works of his favourite artists: Velázquez, Braque, Morandi, and de Chirico. In 1980, he visited the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The most powerful experience for him was Antoni Tàpies, with his extraordinarily rich and grave atmosphere. He considered Tàpies the greatest painter of our age: “He brought his colours from Hispano ancestors reaching back a millennium; their meanings are deep and allusive, even when he depicts only a few abstract forms with incredible force. These forms are no longer painted but created, in the great moment of concentration, intensified by the riches of the subconscious.”[1] (ibid., p. 34). As a result, from the 1980s onwards, the influence of Italian arte povera – especially the art of Antoni Tàpies – becomes increasingly perceptible in his work.
Similarly to Tàpies’s art, he discovered the fundamental pillars of the universe in the expressivity of materials. Here, the restraint of his youthful use of colour gives way to an expansion of colours and textures, to the lushness of shades, to subtle, almost imperceptible differences and similarities, to delicate yet deeply stirring tonal pairings. Perhaps the most important factor in all these processes is light, which breaks on matte or rough surfaces, glints back from gold or glaze, and becomes charged with meaning through colour.
His use of materials can be defined as a constant process of experimentation. This is clearly visible in the Anyag minták (Material Samples, 1990), where the working process itself often becomes a study: he explores the effects of different materials under different conditions. He carefully records and documents these processes: how coal dust, marble powder, sand, brick dust, copper filings, and the so-called ‘Kerekes Ildikó-type lustre’ take on form and texture when mixed with various binders and adhesives. In this sense, he moves towards arte povera, continuing an artistic endeavour that brings everyday materials into the artistic sphere. Although the name of this endeavour refers to poverty, it concerns not the value of artworks but the materials used. Jakobovits’s pictorial objects are worthy examples of how high-quality artworks can be created from any material.
His work was also greatly influenced by the raku technique, as a result of which the world of motifs from the ceramic works of his wife, the distinguished ceramic artist Márta Jakobovits, appears in many of his paintings. From the motif of Márta’s raku cushions, an entire series of paintings emerged, such as Költői hangulat, Márta raku-párnácskáinak hangulata (Poetic Mood, The Atmosphere of Márta’s Raku Cushions, 1995, tempera on cardboard); Költői hangulat, Szürke atmoszféra (Poetic Mood, Grey Atmosphere, 1996, tempera on cardboard); Költői hangulat, Parázsló hangulat (Poetic Mood, Smouldering Atmosphere, 1995, tempera on cardboard); Költői hangulat, Izzó hangulat (Poetic Mood, Glowing Atmosphere, 1995, tempera on cardboard). Through his wife, he also approached the world of ceramics, which expanded and deepened his experiments with material, bringing to light ever new possibilities of material expressivity.
One might say that the direction of his pictorial objects emerged from his experience of the mysteries and techniques of ceramics and of engaging with material. When viewing these works, what first captures the viewer’s attention is the rich expressive power of colours and of the qualities and textures of different materials. From the 1980s onwards, he increasingly distances himself from figuration and places ever greater emphasis on the expressive power of rhythm created by different forms. The subsequent period is characterised mainly by pictorial objects, works on paper, and ceramics.
In Jakobovits’s pictorial objects, one senses the spirit of raku: the aspiration for artworks to be born from the joint work of nature, the artist, and chance. These works were created using various techniques; he experimented extensively with spatulas and knives. As he himself said: “I do not paint; I work with knives.” For this reason, his works are so organic, containing nothing forced or artificial. They reveal the mystery of an ancient world. The expressive power of the materials and forms draws the viewer into an intimate, mysterious world of nature.
In his late period, he attributed great importance to colour, achieving its effects through unexpected colour juxtapositions. We see simple forms within a palette unfolding from subtle to intense. The vibrating tones of blue, green, red, or turquoise are endlessly varied by the diversity of textures. Granulated, matte, velvety, rough, or glossy surfaces evoke the topography of another world. In this way, the infinite possibilities of colour unfold before the viewer’s eyes – subtle and delicate, yet capable of being profoundly stirring. Because his compositions are simple and avoid narration, he allows colours, forms, and materials to speak.
“The object is an excuse by which I come to sense the atmosphere of past ages in blue,” the artist confessed. For him, there are no banal objects or commonplace forms; each appears with a sense of destiny, with a clearly defined place, time, and message – anything can become a work of art in the artist’s hands. He takes ‘found objects’, glues, collages, recolours, combines, or ennobles them with gold and silver until he reaches the timeless pulse of forms and rhythms. Although he often works with ready-mades, his use of objects differs greatly from pop culture, as it is deeply personal and emotionally charged. An outstanding example is Az édesapám isonzói köpenye (My Father’s Soča Coat, 2011, textile, nails, pressed board, collage from the coat), in which he collaged fragments of his father’s coat.
The forms and imagery of his motifs may be regarded as archetypes of an old age embedded in DNA: the circle, the semicircle, the oval lines of domes reveal the warm, supple geometry of ancient worlds. These forms also function symbolically in Jakobovits’s work: the oval symbolises harmony, the circle completeness.
In addition, I consider it important to mention the artist’s spaces. In his pictorial objects, he presents constructions that lack a third dimension. Paraphrasing Paul Klee, one might say that he does not reproduce the visible but makes it visible. Since his representations of space cannot be separated from time, his works also function as time phenomena. They condense multiple layers of temporal interpretation: personal and cosmic time, the time of the artwork and of material, and the time of interpretation. The roots of all this are to be found in metaphysical painting, especially in the oeuvres of Giorgio de Chirico and Giorgio Morandi. As a result, his pictorial objects are characterised by frozen time condensed into eternity, which at the same time imbues them with a mystical aura. This time condensed into the depths of solitude is the common denominator of the works; they do not narrate but present and evoke states and feelings. Their organising principles are the geometries of organic spatial formation: arcades, arches, circles, or semicircles. The spaces he paints do not function as external spaces but lead the visitor into an inner dimension, into an archaic, archetypal world. The architectural construction of his images entirely dispenses with flora and fauna; his ‘landscapes’, stripped of all ornamentation, depict buildings reduced to the simplest drawings of forms and lines. They guide us into an inner, intimate world, one characterised – like his works – by patience, deliberation, and composure.
The tranquillity of the Mediterranean world is condensed in his works created after his journey to Rome. The Colosseum, Roman arcades and bridges, and the purified, calm rhythm of architectural elements had a profound influence on him. From this period dates his series Sisakok (Helmets), characterised by the use of materials with varied textures and forms covered with gold and silver sheets. He creates a play of light on surfaces, as material absorbs or reflects it. Objects worn by human use, such as rusty buckets or pieces of iron, are ennobled through appropriate colour pairings, expressing the fragility of human fates and, above all, their eternity.
Using a universal visual language, he rises above the moment. The motifs of his buildings appear frontally in a two-dimensional space, in which spatial effect is achieved through relief-like, pastose treatment. In his pictorial objects, modern and archaic motifs intermingle; clearly defined forms and shapes appear, with no horizon line, which may evoke a sense of timeless abandonment in the viewer. By the absence of environment and horizon, architectural elements are placed into empty spaces. Silence is palpable in these works, yet it is not oppressive. They have a dreamlike quality, from which consciousness is almost entirely excluded.
In his paper-based works, he employs a painting technique that exploits the structural possibilities of paper pulp. The essence of this technique lies in pre-colouring paper fibres to create fluid layers of paper which, when thinly layered upon one another, remain translucent while colours intermingle in the wet medium. Thus colourful bodies rendered in geometric forms emerge, in which the transparency and interweaving of colour layers create an abstraction beyond painterliness. Examples include Idő nyomok (Traces of Time), Idő-nyomat (Time Imprint), and Kék titok (Blue Secret).
Viewing Jakobovits’s works, we witness a continuously re-created world in which the act of re-creation has a meditative character. These pictorial objects function as mantras of the artist’s meditation on existence. They are not narratives or stories, but magical acts of colour and form that carry contents and emotions ‘which can be expressed only through the language of colour’. One might say that they are not objects but acts, for Jakobovits Miklós was primarily interested in the creative process itself – not the finished work or end product, but creation, the act of bringing into being.
[2017]