Krisztina Kókay was born in Esztergom, and this fact largely determined her sensitivity to the arts. Even in the most difficult times, she was surrounded by the love and security of a large, close-knit family. Thus, it happened that her artistic talent and excellent sense of colour, which manifested at a very early age, were nurtured: she was given drawing tools, and her wishes came true – after working with pastels and watercolour, she was finally able to paint with oil! She used to observe “Uncle Guszti Bajor”, the painter of Esztergom, as he painted along the Little Danube embankment. Ágost Bajor (1892–1958) was a painter and graphic artist who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and achieved international recognition.
For her entrance examination to the Secondary School of Fine and Applied Arts, Krisztina Kókay brought six large oil paintings depicting the streets and characteristic parts of Esztergom. She was admitted to the painting department and took her final exam there. Her teacher, Miklós Göllner, played a decisive role in her being accepted into the College of Applied Arts, where she later graduated from the textile department. After completing her studies, she worked briefly at the Goldberger Factory of the Cotton Printing Industry Company, where unfortunately the knowledge of qualified designers was not put to proper use.
After her marriage to Dr. Ferenc Paulin and the birth of their two children, Renáta and Kristóf, one part of her world closed while another opened. During this time, she drew a great deal, and these drawings marked the beginning of the formation of her own artistic world. Around this period, she worked for fashion designers – among them Etelka Köck, for whom she painted on silk – and for theatres, including designs for Márta Jánoskúti, also on silk.
In 1981 and 1982, she worked at the Textile Art Workshop in Velem, whose opportunities and creative atmosphere gave new momentum to the unfolding of her art. At the same time, she received a commission from interior designer Villő Detre in Budapest to design and execute a mural for the interior of the Flamenco Hotel – an assignment that came at precisely the right moment. The basic motif was already in place; it only needed to be developed further. She enriched these motifs with formal elements drawn from the varied abundance of plant life. Thus, based on her wide-ranging experience as a textile designer, she created the large-scale, 130-square-meter composition – consisting of thirteen 6-meter-wide panels – using a distinctive painting technique of her own. Her first monumental mural was recognized in 1983 with the Nívó Award of the Ministry of Culture, following the recommendation of a jury composed of painters and architects.
Drawing became a daily necessity for her – the foundation of all her work was graphite or ink drawing. “From 1985 on, almost imperceptibly, while meditating, my thoughts, inner struggles, joys, sorrows, and memories found their way onto paper. Instead of letters and words, lines appeared – it is for me a special kind of language” – wrote Krisztina Kókay in her notes.
The artist recognized – and embraced – the possibility that artistic creation can express the complexity of human life and the enriching power of lived difficulties. Through her meditative drawing, her “runic writing”, she developed an independent system of signs that became her own unique script. These drawings, born out of a palpable inner tension, convey drama, the unspeakable, what can only be expressed in this way. Works such as Fájdalom (Pain), Kötelék (Bond), and Egy darab kő (A Piece of Stone) are examples of this.
It is no less significant for an artist when another artist – one who has already proven and earned recognition in their own field – offers an assessment of her work. In the foreword to the book-catalogue published in 2004, Győző Somogyi, attuned to the artist’s creative wavelength, expressed his understanding of Kókay Krisztina’s art as follows: “Krisztina Kókay’s drawings possess the same mist-like, breath-fine delicacy as her textiles. […] Every sheet appears carefully planned. The proportions and forms of the empty and densely drawn areas are perfect. Yet there is no question of deliberate design or conscious composition. Just as the spacing of the densely arranged lines is not measured, the drawing itself is not planned. Such drawing can only be done in a completely relaxed, semi-conscious state. […] Only when reason slumbers or switches off, surrendering itself to the hand, and the hand in turn entrusts itself to instinct and soul – to life experience that has become instinct, to ancient knowledge, to aesthetic cultivation. One line calls for the next. The beauty-guided rhythm of the hatching, the texture already formed, determines the direction of the following lines. And it tells the artist when to stop working – often incomprehensibly, but precisely at the right moment. Only in inspiration can one draw this way. Inspiration and diligence: these are the keys to Krisztina Kókay’s art; the rest is mystery”.
It is important to note, regarding the artist’s extensive body of work – with its increasingly philosophical atmosphere and use of materials – that her oeuvre follows two independent directions: autonomous textile art and autonomous graphic art. She often enlarges her graphite and ink drawings to two, three, or even four meters, transferring them onto linen or cotton canvas, or painting and drawing them on silk with a special pen, usually in a single colour (for example, Elmaradt beszélgetés [Unspoken Conversation]). Krisztina Kókay is persistently and patiently preoccupied with a difficult question: the approach to the human soul through drawing. “Lines, lines – so many unspoken words, emotions, questions that might cause pain, or perhaps we are forever too late to speak them. Words, lines, so many lines on the silk – perhaps, when the work is done, we may finally find relief through it after all” – she confides.
The third group of her works comprises autonomous woven tapestries – gobelins – whose refinement lies in their richly toned colour compositions. (The Secret of the Mountain). In the opening speech of the 1997 exhibition of tapestries and drawings at the Vigadó Gallery, the writer Magda Szabó expressed her thoughts as follows: “Only creation is eternal; only the path marked by the creator can guide us. The exhibiting artist’s visual language is truly comprehensible. Just as our entire personal existence may hang on a single thread, so too may the fate of the world, of the cosmos itself, turn upon a fiber thinner than a hair – or upon a line traced by an instrument that replaces it. There is no rope, no utopian vision of humanity’s salvation that could be stronger than that thread, thinner than a breath and blacker than black itself – or that stroke, which shows no mercy to itself or to others, yet wordlessly reveals what we flee from, whence we came, where we are going, and where, amid the jungle of excitements, fears, hopes, and doubts, the faintly phosphorescent clearing of a newborn hope begins to open. The artist, without knowing it, confesses – speaking to Almighty God, to her art’s spiritual father, to the world, to everyone – the unspeakable, which she communicates through a needle-fine graphic system of signs when she works not with thread, but on paper. Each of her works is a confession; a psychiatrist searches among those thread-thin traces for herself, for the deciphering of her own creations, for the explanation of her own being – and is the first to be startled when she realizes how much of the intangible she has managed to grasp, how much of the unsayable she has managed to draw, with the holy bird – the immense responsibility of art – upon her shoulder.”
Krisztina Kókay created her large-scale work Palást I. (Mantle I) (210 × 470 cm) around the turn of the millennium, drawn and painted on linen. In this piece, she depicted the Intelmek (Admonitions) written by King Saint Stephen to his son, Prince Emeric.
Its counterpart, Palást II. (Mantle II), of the same size, begins on the left with lines from the Ómagyar Mária-siralom (Old Hungarian Lament of Mary), continuing with an archaic folk prayer collected by Zsuzsanna Erdélyi. On the right, poems by Bálint Balassi and then Sándor Márai follow. Planning and improvisation – these two qualities coexist in Krisztina Kókay’s art, as exemplified in the creation of the Mantle. While inscribing Márai’s poems, she realized that the final piece, Mennyből az angyal (The Angel from Heaven), would likely not fit. Therefore, she stopped writing and, beginning at the edge of the linen, wrote the beautiful poem from 1956 backwards, from the last letter to the first. Art historian Judit Jóry writes of these works: “The monumental linen objects – mantle-shaped, mantle-formed works – present a sequence of literary texts. The significance of these texts is well known. The artist, Krisztina Kókay, inscribes familiar or lesser-known lines with the humility of a draughtswoman. Thus, the letters, words, and sentences – ‘the lines’ – undergo a peculiar metamorphosis, transforming from literary values into a work of visual art. The composition, built from hand-written letters, is calligraphic, and the sea of words creates a unique visual impact.”
Krisztina Kókay’s drawings and textiles reflect a sensitive, quiet yet strong and orderly world, revealing a determined personality. Her tapestry Ünnep (Celebration) is a work of dramatic seriousness. It speaks of sublime union – or of separation. Both possibilities dwell within human relationships, especially between man and woman. The path toward Celebration, toward harmony, leads through many tensions; to reach resolution, one must, in a sense, crucify the selfish half of the self.
Kókay values the importance of silence, which is indispensable to her work. Attentive inwardness, the search for truth, and the depth of understanding have guided her toward the development of her own artistic language – an instinctive creative force.
She has participated several times in the International Drawing Biennale in Pilsen, exhibiting, among others, her graphite drawings Ezer fohász I., II., III. (A Thousand Prayers I, II, III). With her graphite series Fegyverneki föld I., II., III. (Land of Fegyvernek I, II, and III), she recalls both the lands once taken from her mother’s family and the affectionate childhood memories of summers spent with her great-grandmothers.
Her work Régi kert (Old Garden) – painted and drawn on textile, measuring 320 × 137 cm – was created from tiny, millimetre-long lines. The varied use of lines produces differences in tone. Secret paths and intricate forms lead through delicate shifts of scale and rhythm, evoking the struggles of a journey from somewhere to somewhere else.
Over time, her characteristically serious and individual artistic language has become increasingly recognisable. Her drawings, when transposed onto textiles, gain in scale and richness, demanding a large space, yet they preserve their intimacy and exert a powerful visual impact. One such work is Golyózápor Przemyslinél, 1914–1918 (Hail of Bullets at Przemyśl, 1914–1918), a remembrance of her grandfather.
Art historian Hedvig Dvorszky wrote about her 2015 exhibition at the Fészek Gallery and about the drawing A Hold titkai (Secrets of the Moon): “Her graphite drawing Secrets of the Moon is remarkable in several respects. With its delicate, whisper-like lines, it conveys a sense of eternal ‘unattainability’, while the soft braids, easily handled thanks to the artist’s experience in textile art, create a gentle, almost familial atmosphere around one of humanity’s most mysterious objects of desire. Originally trained in printed textile techniques and later designing tapestries, the artist has, through her painstaking, hand-drawn, large-scale textile graphics on silk or linen, become a uniquely distinctive craftswoman. Through her endlessly complex compositions – never simple – she has become a spiritual companion to poets whose thoughts take flight on words.” A representative example is her work Hadak útja (Path of the Armies) (300 × 186 cm, tussah silk), presented in spring 2017 at the National Salon exhibition at the Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle Budapest).
For Krisztina Kókay, the reverence for her ancestors provides the example for heroically enduring hardship and trial. She emphasizes that she regards them as her roots. The extraordinarily varied representation of these roots runs through the entire span of her fifty-year artistic career. A sincere confession of faith. Her pastel drawings Ősök és őseink (Ancestors and Our Ancestors) were later realized under the same titles as works painted on tussah silk and also as gobelins.
Krisztina Kókay has created numerous works inspired by her hometown. Among them, the gobelin Várhegy (Castle Hill) holds particular significance. It evokes, on one hand, the figure of Bálint Balassi, who sacrificed his life beneath the fortress walls, and, on the other, the artist’s own student years, as she attended school there for eight years.
Castle Hill is also a spiritual symbol – a sacred place. It rises upward toward an ever brighter, more radiant blue sky. In the tapestry, the lines and rows suddenly break off, embracing a concave, negative form – a pure white surface: the unspeakable, the holiest of all. It was on the mountaintop that Moses met God.
Among her mostly non-figurative drawings and tapestry designs, there is one true portrait –that of Bálint Balassi. How new and how profoundly human this face appears in Krisztina Kókay’s rendering: the artist who glorified life, the great patriot who, more than four centuries ago, gave his life here for the Hungarian nation.
Krisztina Kókay knows well that creation requires silence and the right environment. For this reason, she organized and led the Textile Art Workshop in Zsennye between 1992 and 1996, and later, from 1997 to 2003, in Kecskemét, where artists could work under ideal conditions. From 2003 for four years, she also organized and directed an artists’ colony for fine artists in Esztergom.
In 2015, commissioned by the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA), she curated a large-scale exhibition in memory of the First World War, held at the St. Adalbert Center in Esztergom.
In the past year, inspired by the painfully beautiful writings and poems of István Sinka, she has sought through drawing to interpret their moving depths and heights. This exploration has given rise to her works Fekete bojtár vallomásai I. és II. (Confessions of the Black Shepherd I and II), Nagy utakról hazatérve (Returning from Great Journeys), and Anyám balladát táncol (My Mother Dances a Ballad).
To quote the writer and poet János Oláh, Krisztina Kókay’s artistic credo may be described as “the drama of revelation and concealment”. These two seemingly opposite concepts simultaneously and inseparably characterize her art. Her message to us all is this: to open ourselves to the Creator and to one another, while remaining aware that this can only be achieved through the individual’s withdrawal, through self-effacement. This great and profound drama is what Krisztina Kókay so powerfully expresses in her art.
[ 2017]