Dénes Kuti’s works resist straightforward categorisation. “Some commentators have described his painting as a kind of ‘fairy-tale realism’, others have associated it with ‘magical-realist supranaturalism’; some have emphasised an ‘absurd realist’ approach, while others have spoken of the painter’s ‘natural symbolism’. Most, however, highlight the hyperrealist qualities of his works.”[1] It may be tempting to identify his oeuvre as a form of lyrically inflected absurd realism, if one insists on confining his paintings within a conceptual framework, yet it is probably more reasonable to accept that Kuti cannot, and indeed should not, be pigeonholed into the restrictive categories of an ism, a movement, or a neatly defined artistic phenomenon.[2]
By his own admission, Kuti seeks to ensure that what he paints is realistic and true to life in its details, yet absurd and ultimately inexplicable in its entirety, for he believes that a painter achieves his aim only when a work provokes reflection while at the same time giving aesthetic pleasure.
Although he was a member of MAMŰ (Marosvásárhelyi Műhely; Târgu Mureș Workshop) for many years, “action art, collective forms of expression, performance, land-art happenings, and collective conceptual manifestations, which characterised the MAMŰ group, were alien to him”.[3] For Kuti, solitude is far more important, as it enables the meditative state and deep concentration required for artistic creation. In the formation of his compositions he assigns no role whatsoever to photography; throughout the creative process he relies exclusively on direct observation of nature with the naked eye. He attributes particular significance to invested labour, and equally to creativity itself. “When I play with the landscape, I subconsciously attempt, in a small way, to create. (…) I transform it to some extent, I idealise nature slightly, yet once one intervenes, one somehow also damages it. Perhaps this is why there are no human figures in my landscapes. I, however, am present invisibly, or at least I imagine myself as being there”.[4]
Nature constitutes the central theme of his art; vivid green vegetation recurs again and again in his paintings. “And grass covers everything, resoundingly green, early spring grass”.[5] At first glance, his images thus evoke the freshness of nature, springtime, and rebirth. Yet are these pictures truly manifestations of a positive worldview? In a conversation from 1998, reflecting on his attraction to the colour green, he formulates the question with characteristic ambiguity: “They say that the funniest people are often the saddest. Could we not also say that whoever is the greenest outwardly is the saddest inwardly? … or perhaps the one who harbours the deepest secrets?” The greens that appear in his paintings have been described in strikingly varied ways: some have spoken of a “brilliantly raw Veronese green” (Dénes Molnár), others of the “tender green of spring grass” (Lilla Szépréti), or of a “fever-dream green”, a “green glow” (Mihály Sebestyén), even a “miracle green” (Mária Adonyi Nagy).[6] According to the German critic Hanna Styrie, more than one of Dénes Kuti’s paintings amounts to nothing less than a veritable green symphony.
Art historian Bálint Chikán had, however, already drawn attention to the unease emanating from these paintings, an effect generated by what he describes as the combination of the “hypersensitive, faithful rendering of nature and the creation of grotesque, impossible situations”. The painter himself reflects on this tension as follows: “There is an explanation for the tension in my paintings as well. Once I was walking here in Sovata (Szováta), near the Junger bend. I saw the silky hillside. And then I painted a landscape that was like a sheet. Realistic in its details, but absurd as a whole. That is where the tension comes from.”
In his works, Dénes Kuti most often depicts the natural beauties of the Sóvidék region (lit., the “Salt Region”), situated not far from his home town of Sovata. Yet, as one critic observes, “while the distinctive, mixed greens of his village street scenes are convincing and authentic, in his landscapes the same light-saturated greens (…) appear improbable, even alien. The forests, pinewoods, clearings, and pastures of the Sóvidék are not this green, not even in full sunlight.”[7]
Pál Nagy, a teacher at the Marosvásárhelyi Képzőművészeti Középiskola (High School of Fine Arts, Târgu Mureș), prepared several generations for artistic careers; Dénes Kuti was among them. It was this painter-teacher who deepened in him “the demand for a new way of seeing” and first drew his attention to hyperrealism, a mode of representation that brings the phenomena of reality so close, often enlarging them many times over, that what is shown does not, in fact, exist as such, or at least not in any way perceptible to the human eye… The composition of Kuti’s A rög (lit. The Clod) recalls, in certain respects, the massive rock in René Magritte’s The Castle of the Pyrenees. Although the Belgian painter’s work belongs more directly to surrealism, affinities can nonetheless be traced between the meticulous finish and pared-back compositional clarity of his paintings, often dispensing with the human figure, and the work of Dénes Kuti. In Fordított perspektíva (lit. Reversed Perspective), grass and flowers themselves form the horizon, before which a shrub-dotted landscape unfolds. Of Sírhant (lit. Grave Mound), one commentator observes that it presents “a moss-covered, worn stone, sunk into the earth and stripped of its inscription, yet above the resting body the grass is far taller and denser than its surroundings. (…) For Kuti, our values are books and other human-associated objects thrown into a large, rusty rubble-container. And in his suitcase, folded with exemplary care and tied down, there lie Transylvania’s pinewoods, meadows, and cloud-laden skies.”[8] In his paintings, nature is often placed in strangely dislocating situations. In Az eldobott mező (lit. The Discarded Field), for example, the landscape is painted as though one might simply pull a field away from it like a garment, only to crumple it up with ease. Writing of this work, Miklós Nagy Kund notes that there is “something unusual in the mysterious yet utterly real-seeming, inexplicable spectacle, in a beauty turned upside down, whose emerald radiance (later spoken of as ‘Kuti green’) has suffered a mortal wound from the grey of some coarse intervention”.[9]
Perhaps Dénes Kuti’s best-known work is the paradoxical painting entitled Az ösvény (lit. The Path), whose reproduction was first published in the February 1999 issue (no. 380) of Múzsa. The image presents the inversion of a rural footpath: the grass grows tall precisely where the path ought to run, while alongside it the vegetation has been cut back, or rather has dried out and worn away. In its visual appearance and meticulous execution the work adheres closely to reality; its meaning, however, is anything but self-evident.
Kuti’s first major exhibition took place in 1976 in Sovata. In the years that followed, prompted by his move to a rural environment, his art turned decisively towards nature; it was during this period that he painted the large-scale oil Békés katicabogár (lit. Peaceful Ladybird), a work that introduced a new tonal register into his oeuvre. As one commentator observed, it was “different, and in its very otherness felt fresher, more contemporary than what viewers had previously been accustomed to. Set within a serene, vividly green meadow in riotous bloom appears a metallic, object-like, darkly cold heap of weapons.”[10] The year 1981 he devoted entirely to what he himself described as the analysis of “the tree.”[11]
In 1990 Dénes Kuti took part in the artists’ colony in Marcali, after which he exhibited his works in the lobby of the Helikon Hotel in Keszthely and in the chamber hall of the Marcali Cultural Centre, together with Anna Megyes, Ferenc Tóth, Zoltán Nyíri and Vilmos Szabó. Later the same year, a group exhibition of Transylvanian artists was organised at the Metró Klub in Dohány Street, in which Kuti also participated. The exhibition was opened by Géza Bereményi, who noted that “the exhibiting Transylvanian artists paint and model according to high aesthetic and moral standards. The boundaries between styles are surprisingly broad. There are those who have been captivated by the tendencies of land art; Dénes Kuti, for example, conveys this new ideal in the medium of the easel painting.”
Also in 1990, responding to the tragic events of March in Târgu Mureș, Kuti briefly returned to gesture painting. In his painting Requiem, “an unstoppable avalanche of colour plunges into the depths: dark tones laid on with broad brushstrokes – innumerable variants of black, dark blue, brown, deep green, and purple – tumble into the chasm, perhaps into damnation. And yet not entirely so, for in the depths they flare into burning greens, yellows, and reds, intimating the hope of an eruption, of an ascent.”[12] The painting, which was also shown at the exhibition commemorating the 1956 Revolution, now hangs together with a companion work on the wall of the ceremonial hall of the Sovata Town Hall.
In 2002, at a joint exhibition with textile artist Kati Bandi in the Palace of Culture in Târgu Mureș, he was able to present what were regarded as his most significant works; the show received favourable critical notice. Almost a decade later, in 2013, an exhibition at the Kárpát-haza Gallery in Nagysándor József Street offered the public the opportunity to view nineteen of his paintings.
At the Contemporary Hungarian Fine Art Exhibition held in Beijing in 2011, the Chinese public encountered his work Vérmező (lit. Field of Blood) alongside the works of thirty-two other artists. The painting depicts reddish earth emerging from beneath green vegetation, lending the composition an ominous, foreboding atmosphere. By contrast, during a public discussion connected to his exhibition at the Semmelweis Salon a year later, György Szemadám observed that Dénes Kuti’s paintings are “dominated by bright, cheerful colours, which is uncharacteristic of contemporary Hungarian painting. In his view, two elements are especially decisive in Kuti’s work: first, the inner light that radiates from the paintings, and second, the absence of the human figure.”
Religion occupies a significant place within Dénes Kuti’s oeuvre. In this spirit he created, among others, A Golgota, A kereszt árnyéka (lit. The Shadow of the Cross), and A kereszt ígérete (lit. The Promise of the Cross). The composition of his painting Mária-jelenés (lit. The Apparition of Mary) shows affinities with Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World). The work proved to be the most popular piece among students at last year’s Boldogasszony exhibition held at the Várkert Bazár,[13] thereby partially fulfilling the artist’s intention, since, in his view, the essence of art lies in its ability “to delight, to offer a gift, and to give something positive to people.”
[2016]
[1] Miklós Nagy Kund, Kuti Dénes, Pallas-Akadémia Könyvkiadó, Csíkszereda, 2012, p. 6.
[2] Miklós Nagy Kund, ibid., p. 6.
[3] Miklós Nagy Kund, ibid., p. 16.
[4] Excerpt from one of the painter’s conversations with Miklós Nagy Kund.
[5] Lajos Pálffy, http://mandarchiv.hu/cikk/2278/Borondjebe_hajtogatta_Erdelyt
[6] Miklós Nagy Kund, ibid., p. 22.
[7] http://cyberpress.sopron.hu/article.php?id=2755
[8] http://mandarchiv.hu/cikk/2278/Borondjebe_hajtogatta_Erdelyt
[9] Miklós Nagy Kund, op. cit.
[10] Miklós Nagy Kund, ibid., p. 22.
[11] Bálint Chikán, “Médium”, Fine Art Exhibition in Sfântu Gheorghe, Jelenkor, 1983/1, p. 85.
[12] Miklós Nagy Kund, ibid., p. 24.
[13] http://diak.budai-rfg.sulinet.hu/~kasza/Boldogasszony_KORR/maria.html