Throughout his career, Gábor Lajta has been in contact with many stylistic movements and several artistic disciplines. In the early stages of his painting career, he drew heavily from the works of Cézanne, Gauguin and Dürer. In the 1980s, he worked as the art director of Filmvilág, and his works from this period were often linked to various cinematographic works (Film-vászon-képek [Cinematic Images]).
He then departed somewhat from his earlier conception and, working with reduced painterly means, created what might be called instinctive paintings: simple colour fields, gestures on canvas, paintings that approached the abstract, yet these works were also representational, only reduced to the extreme. At this time, he worked mostly with few colours, exploiting the light and shadow effect. His use of colour was mostly in shades of black, white and grey.
Just before the fall of communism, he studied in Vienna on a scholarship at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst (College of Applied Arts), which led to a transformation of his vision. "The figurative picture emerges from this abyss, that is, from the non-figurative (the formless, the abstract, the invisible), like a ghost." [1] At this time he began to paint expressive pictures. His works from this period are influenced primarily by Arnulf Rainer and Francis Bacon (Végállomás késsel [End of the Line with a Knife]) but can also be related to the works of the CoBrA group (e.g. Csapos). Julianna P. Szűcs wrote in connection with a later exhibition at the Ráday Gallery that Lajta's "Shoah series drawn in the 1980s is a fine example of controlled hysteria: the formless experience of horror is somehow always pulled back by the calligraphic instinct for beautiful lines".
This period reached a turning point at the beginning of the next decade, when he opened to realism in his formal development, but until the early 1990s he often returned to expressive figurativeness, and it was also during this period that he made his cubist paraphrase of Poussin's Bacchanaille.
The early 90s are defined by the Jóga-sorozat [Yoga series]: in these images Lajta focuses on the mind-controlled, disciplined and energetic body. Later, in the second half of the decade, his paintings usually feature a single female figure, often nude (Mesterséges nap [Artificial Sun], Akt mosdóállvánnyal [Nude with Washstand], Hátakt takaróval [Back with Blanket]). During this period, he is drawn to empty spaces and unstimulating environments, and his paintings mostly suggest solitude and frailty. "In his works, one or two figures appear, cut off from the world, in the grey, empty space, accentuated in its geometricity, familiar from his early works." [2] In the words of Ernő P. Szabó, "his paintings show variations on the relationship between space and the human figure." [3]
Lajta was clearly inspired by the world of studio people, nudes and models: he was interested in the geometry of human figures immersed in different roles and movements, yet still alive. Later, the figures multiplied in his paintings. Éjfél [Midnight] (1995-1996), a large oil painting (140x100 cm), is one of his major works. The foreground of the painting, which is set in a nightclub with coloured walls, shows a naked couple embracing on the left, a girl sitting in a secluded position with a glass in her hand on the right, and a man at the bar in the background. Although the figures are very close, they are not making a pass at each other. Despite the strong colours of the composition, the figures are sad, slumped, introspective – their loneliness seems to be relieved only by their physicality.
As the painting above is a good example, Lajta attaches great importance to the colours he uses in his works: “I would like to be more colourful and at the same time more painterly. I would like to be more painterly in the sense that Francis Bacon's obsession with the painter just slapping the paint on, and the picture is done. But the painting must also be very precise. It is this contradiction that fascinates me to this day." [4] He says in an interview.
In his series Nox, sometimes sociographic in approach, he is fascinated by multifaceted compositions, dynamic concert scenes, the hustle and bustle, movement and lights of nightlife. The images were inspired by the 'fairytale-like' night music concerts in Frankhegy [in Budaörs]. István Sinkó described Gábor Lajta's series of exhibitions after the turn of the millennium as one of the most challenging and problematic of the period. “Lajta presents a series of large oil paintings, small oil sketches and aquarelles under the name Nox in adjoining exhibition spaces. The theme is night (nox in Latin), the world of rockers, concerts, parties on the Frankhegy or on the student’s island. He has been visiting these places for two years, making sketches and occasionally photographs, living in the thick of the night. At the same time, he sees all this as a pretext, a thematic starting point, to take further steps along the path of figurative painting that he has set for himself." [5]
The composition of 2002's Este születünk, hajnalban halunk meg [We Are Born in The Evening, We Die at Dawn] is somewhat like Kernstok's Lovasok a vízparton [Riders on the waterfront], but we might also be reminded of the composition of contrast of light and shade in The Night Watch or George de la Tour's work, who was highly regarded by Lajta. The blue cityscape behind the underdressed pink figures in the foreground is framed by the green canopies of the trees. "Gábor Lajta strives for synthesis, for him the ‘grand motive’ means nothing other than summing up the achievements of painting so far, [...] the tableau of the large-scale concert pictures (Agora, Rajongás [Admiration], Még egy perc [One More Minute], etc.) brings the problem of the multifaceted image back into painting, the conflicting problems of order and drama." [6]
From 2002 onwards, he also painted watercolours more frequently in the expressive mode of neo-figurativism (e.g. the series of Képkockák [Still Frames]). Around 2004-2005, he painted theatrical images of groups – e.g. the Próbaszünet [Rehearsal Break], the Perszephoné elrablása [Abduction of Persephone], the Dunakorzó [Danube Promenade] – which hark back to the Italian and French masters who painted decorative stage scenes in the great Baroque period but are also not without (self)-ironic overtones.
Around 2006-2007, he mainly painted new nudes (Kezek [Hands]) and still lifes (Szárny és tea [Wing and Tea], Festőeszközök [Painting Tools]), and – as a kind of role-playing – he repeatedly portrayed the relationship between artist and model (Szeparé sorozat [Private Booth series]).
The Salome series, painted from 2007 to 2009, "which opens the story towards picturesqueness, towards a heightened mythical ambiguity, is unique in its duality of actualisation and timelessness" [7]. In 2014, he painted a large altarpiece entitled Emmausi vacsora [The Supper at Emmaus]; he is also inspired by events in the daily news: in 2015, he painted a series of scenes (Búcsúzás [Farewell]; Árkádok [Arcades]; Átkelő [Crossing]) that capture the last stages of the journey of Ophélie Bretnacher, a French student who disappeared in Budapest seven years earlier, captured by CCTV cameras, and which the artist continues to reflect on (Víz alatt [Underwater]; Híd [Bridge], Táska [Bag]).
Lajta painted a lot directly after the model, sometimes studying a single setting for a year. He also considered photography as a kind of study, but "he insisted on the original, personally experienced view, the visual impression, which the photograph cannot reproduce in its entirety." [8] Nevertheless, it can be said that the works were also influenced by the painter's knowledge of film (he also made amateur films for four years from the late 1970s).
In terms of more immediate influences, Francis Bacon is the most notable, but the artist was undoubtedly influenced by the works of Kitaj, Antonio Lopez Garcia, Eric Fischl and, among his compatriots, Tibor Csernus and Sándor Molnár.
In addition to his work as a painter, Lajta has written extensively on art, including Picasso, Rembrandt, Cézanne and questions about figurative painting. In his studies and articles, which have analysed the painting of Kitaj, Bacon or Csernus, he argues for the presence and importance of neo-figurativism, the existence of traditions and roots of panel painting, and approaches his subjects methodically. [9] Of his award-winning Picasso article, Dávid Megyeri noted that the author's style strives for simplicity and is free of any heavy-handed, pompous, theorising mazes. His theoretical work has the same unpretentious, reflective but sensitive and passionate attitude as his painting.
As János Sturcz aptly characterizes it, "[...] for Lajta, tradition is not merely a postmodern quotation, an elegant decoration, but a lived, acquired knowledge that is organically integrated into his contemporary pictorial language, his iconography, which integrates elements of both classical and late modern pictures. Lajta paints the everyday life of contemporary man, yet he is not realistic, since all his sites and objects [...] are symbolic. But this symbolism is hidden behind a veil of minimalism inherited from modernism."[10]
Starting from the works of classical artists, Gábor Lajta experimented with numerous techniques—from gestural painting and Expressionism to geometrically conceived works—and incorporated many movements into his art. Yet throughout his three-decade-long career, he has demonstrated that lyrical figurative panel painting remains relevant in contemporary times.
[1] Excerpt from Gábor Lajta's lecture A figuratív kép. [lit. Figurative Picture] Hungarian Academy of Arts, 3 June 2016.
[2] http://artportal.hu/lexikon/muveszek/lajta-gabor-1692
[3] Ernő P. Szabó: Tér és Tükör [lit. Space and Mirror]. Magyar Nemzet. 9 July 1999.
[4] http://lajtagabor.com/images/interju/2002_08_Sinkovits_Ismerosok_az_ejszakaban_Lajta_Gabor.pdf
[5] István Sinkó: Nappallá tett éjszakák [lit. Turning Nights into Days]. Élet és Irodalom, 17 May 2002.
[6] István Sinkó: Nappallá tett éjszakák [lit. Turning Nights into Days]. Élet és Irodalom, 17 May 2002.
[7] István Sinkó: Salomé Guantanamón [Salome at Guantanamo]. Élet és Irodalom, Vol. LIII No. 21, 22 May 2009.
[8] Excerpt from János Sturcz's essay A teremtő fénytől a szenvedő testig – Lajta Gábor festői útja 1986-tól napjainkig [From the Creative Light to the Suffering Body – Gábor Lajta's Painterly Journey from 1986 to the Present]. http://lajtagabor.com/images/lgrol/2009_Sturcz_A_teremto_fenytol_a_szenvedo_testig_Lajta_Gabor.pdf
[9] István Sinkó: Nappallá tett éjszakák [lit. Turning Nights into Days]. Élet és Irodalom, 17 May 2002.
[10] Sturcz, ibid.