Approaching István Sinkó’s career from a single perspective is an impossible task, just as it is impossible to present, within the confines of a few pages, this multifaceted life path that remains unwaveringly active and rich in creative energy to this day. Sinkó is not only an art teacher, fine artist, musician and art writer, but also a driving force behind various creative communities and one of the key theoreticians of contemporary art, while at the same time a constantly renewing creator. Without him, Hungarian museum education would not be what it is today; his innovative, contemporarily oriented art programmes have led several generations of young people to engage with art as an integral part of everyday life and to regularly visit museums. The polyhistor Sinkó’s activities are therefore best presented decade by decade, so that we can get as close as possible to a comprehensive view.
From Budapest to Szeged
István Sinkó was born in Budapest in 1951. His father was a painter and his mother a violinist. His father, Károly Sinkó, worked as Károly Lyka’s teaching assistant between 1933 and 1935 and later became a landscape painter, while also excelling as a graphic artist and advertising designer. Among Sinkó’s earliest artistic experiences were plein-air painting with his father and the impact of classical music received through his mother. Initially he intended to pursue a career as a musician: he played in the orchestra of the Szeged Teacher Training College and in 1982 founded his own three-member band. “Music remains one of the most important motivations in my life to this day,” he writes in his inaugural academic lecture.
Between 1971 and 1975 István Sinkó studied at the Juhász Gyula Teacher Training College in Szeged, where he obtained his qualification as an art teacher. One of his teachers was the painter Ernő Fischer (1914–2002), whom he regarded as his master. Fischer’s poetic and intellectual art exerted a lasting influence on the formation of Sinkó’s artistic outlook, and his enduring commitment to his mentor is reflected in the fact that Sinkó is currently president of the Fischer Ernő Foundation. In 1978 he became a member of Studio of Young Fine Artists and took an active part in the artistic scene of the late 1970s. In the same year he produced his first major series, Mesék a majorról (lit. Tales from the Farm, 1978), about which a former fellow student from the college wrote: “In his early work Tales from the Farm, Sinkó seems to have evoked Henri Rousseau’s Luxembourg Garden, with flowers and birds, snow-covered mountain slopes, a river descending from the clouds, fairy-tale houses lined up on a hill, and Chagall-like figures flying through the sky. His brush recorded a sequence of idyllic states, perhaps Eden itself. And that was indeed the case here at the time this image was created: behind a very high fence, we were living in the happiest of paradises.”
Children's world
The farm paintings belong to the tendency that flared up in the second half of the 1970s, a longing for the childlike world of fairy tales, with contemporary works by Mihály Schéner offering close analogies. For neo-avant-garde artists the world of childhood and childlike creativity also came into focus as a metaphorical space of untouched purity, while art pedagogy gained renewed momentum. In 1971, the methodological book Gyermekrajzművészet Japánban (lit. The Art of Children’s Drawing in Japan) by Mária Vida Székácsné, who had lived in Japan for many years, was published, emphasising the importance of art education and bringing its role in Hungary into sharper focus. Between 1975 and 1977, Dóra Maurer and Miklós Erdély held creativity workshops at the Ganz–MÁVAG Cultural Centre in Budapest with the aim of rekindling the child’s ‘natural’ creative inclination in adults. In 1975, at the invitation of the Hungarian National Gallery, the GYIK Workshop (Gyermek és Ifjúsági Képzőművészeti Műhely, Children’s and Youth Art Workshop) was established under the leadership of Árpád Szabados to foster the development of childlike creativity. In 1979 Sinkó joined as a teacher and later he became head of the workshop. The Workshop played an immeasurably important role in the formation and institutionalisation of twentieth-century Hungarian museum education, as Tünde Topor writes: “Árpád Szabados, together with the other founders and the idea’s originator, the then leadership of the Hungarian National Gallery, did an almost inconceivable amount through the creation of the Children’s and Youth Art Workshop to change, over the past forty years, the old attitudes based on poor habits, allowing countless children to relate to creative work absolutely naturally.” In the spirit of the GYIK Workshop, István Sinkó also made educational films about art: from 1979 the six-part Játék a GYIK Műhelyben (lit. Playing in the GYIK Workshop), between 1993 and 1999 Múzeumosdi, in 1997–98 the seven-part Cimbora–Hétszínvirág (lit. Friends–Flower of Seven Colours) and between 1999 and 2000 the ten-part Játék (Play) familiarised school-age children with museums and fostered a love of art.
Vízizene (Water Music) and Fájdalomzászló (Pain Flag)
Meanwhile, as a fine artist, Sinkó opened an exciting and diverse chapter in contemporary Hungarian art. His creative work, spanning several decades, has enriched both the Hungarian and the international art scene through numerous exhibitions, performances and projects. Memorable milestones, distinctive exhibitions and innovative artistic approaches have accompanied his oeuvre to date, from which, without any claim to completeness, only the most important stages are highlighted here.
His first significant group exhibition was the Stúdió (Studio) in 1980, which was extensively reviewed by Lóránd Hegyi. Hegyi devoted an entire paragraph to the works of the young Sinkó, identifying in them the influence of Andy Warhol’s Mick Jagger series. Sinkó’s first solo exhibition took place in September 1981 at the GANF Cultural Centre in Kecskemét, reviewed appreciatively by József Vadas under the title Nyitott ablaknál (lit. By the Open Window). In November of the same year he also exhibited at the Vak Bottyán Museum in Kiskunfélegyháza. In the spring of 1982 he presented his constructed graphic work Vízizene (Water Music) at the Club of Young Fine Artists, a genre-hybrid, postmodern installation described by Miklós Losonci as “the combined effect of music, sculpture and space”.
In 1983, the Stúdió Gallery in Szeged, known for its openness to progressive and avant-garde tendencies, organised a solo exhibition for Sinkó. At the gallery he presented an eighteen-sheet graphic series, which prompted an insightful review by Ágnes Gyetvai, worth quoting at greater length: “In the stage-like space of the tabletop, figures marked at times with watercolour, at others with ink or coloured pencil hover uncertainly, alongside chairs, at one moment a plump chicken matching a hearty appetite, at another flowering fruit trees, ripe fruits, a local war with bullets striking around the table legs, magnificent, colourful songbirds, of course in cages, a dream, a woman, love. Life. Death. As we can see, the world does not offer an overflowing abundance of colourful experiences. Within this modestly delimited yet extraordinarily consistently observed terrain, this tabletop microcosm, every experience has significance, value and weight, and a worthy, beautiful echo emerges in the form of subtle inner resonance. In these palm-sized dimensions of reality, presented with great sympathy and authenticity, a complete, true and beautiful image of reality takes shape, reflected in the human personality striving for wholeness.”
At the Stúdió’s 1984 exhibition, together with István Kalmár, they presented the work entitled Kereszt (Cross), composed for four tape recorders. As reported by Bálint Chikán, “the tape recorders were surrounded by natural materials (moss, reeds, dry grass), cotton wool and painted (red) reed stalks.” In this work the artist duo drew attention to such fundamental and direct pairs of opposites as “natural–artificial, white–black, silent–loud, etc.”
In September 1985, at the annual exhibition of the Studio of Young Fine Artists, under the title Ember-tájfutás (lit. Human–Orienteering), he presented a spatial installation created jointly with István Kalmár. Built around five objects, music and stamps, this site-specific work guided the viewer interactively through the entire exhibition space.
Another outstanding artistic event of the same year was the solo exhibition Jegyzetek (Notes) at the Stúdió Gallery, opened by György Szemadám and accompanied by a unique performance: at the opening, István Sinkó and István Kalmár jointly performed their ‘acoustic sketch’ written for cello, typewriter and tape recorder. The installation shown here, Vízizene, is one of the most beautiful and poetic works of their collaboration, which also attracted significant contemporary attention. Zoltán Nagy wrote in the Művészet (Art) journal about Vízizene as a poetic transposition of the most everyday, absurd phenomena such as water leakage and a dripping tap. György Szemadám reported on the exhibition in a detailed article, emphasising Sinkó’s experimental attitude. “István Sinkó is also a man of ever more curious gestures. In his exhibitions to date we have seen painted, leafable cellophane sheets applied to his own photographs, stretched plastic foils tuned into musical instruments and played with drops of water, tape recorders turning endless loops that produce strange harmonies or spray-painted foils and rolls of hospital gauze,” he writes. Szemadám, who is not only the artist’s critic but also a close friend, devoted a longer analysis to the spatial installation Fájdalomzászló (Pain Flag), which, also in the light of professional reception, stands as one of the major works of the 1980s. It is rooted in Sinkó’s serious motorcycle accident in 1982, as a result of which he spent months in hospital. The drawings made during this period, the memories and the trauma caused by the injury were processed in a spatial sculpture several metres long. As Szemadám puts it, the artist’s “adolescently anti-art” world here took on a serious, plastic form for the first time, marking out his position in art history among the experimental artists of the 1980s who were searching for new voices. The Jegyzetek exhibition also signifies the closing of a period, since from the mid-1980s the artist, previously experimenting with conceptual approaches, re-tuned his artistic practice to a more lyrical and personal approach.
Teaching and the GYIK Workshop
It was in the mid-1980s that Sinkó carried out environment-shaping and space-forming (land art) projects with pupils of the Kós Károly Primary School, which he also reported on in the 1985/5 issue of the Művészet journal. The turn towards thinking in spatial terms that can be observed in Hungarian art in the 1980s, along with the strengthening of spatial installation as a genre, is likewise evident in István Sinkó’s practice. The space-shaping projects realised together with children constituted an unparalleled and forward-looking initiative in Hungary. In the 1990s there was even discussion of curating a GYIK Workshop exhibition for the Hungarian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale together with Ágnes Szabics and István Kalmár, though this unfortunately never came to fruition.
In 1986 he presented compositions that pushed the boundaries of traditional techniques in Kazincbarcika and at the Óbuda Cellar Gallery, while in 1987 he took part in a peace pedagogy and visual education seminar for art teachers and visual education professionals in West Berlin.
In the winter of 1987, together with István Kalmár and his students from a secondary school of art, many of whom later became successful artists/designers such as Mese Benczúr, Zsuzsi Ujj and András Braun, he painted the scenery for the new Ghost Train at the Budapest Amusement Park. The twelve panels presented the history of the Earth and of humanity in the form of mythic images. As a continuation of this work, Sinkó subsequently explored contemporary artistic aspects of artist-designed amusement parks within the framework of a research project.
Presence abroad
Hungarian art underwent a significant transformation in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result of political and social change, new artistic forms and freer modes of articulation were able to emerge. The impact of avant-garde tendencies and postmodern art rendered contemporary art polyphonic, while younger artists also sought to initiate dialogue with international trends. Within this dynamically shifting cultural environment, the possibility of international reception opened up for István Sinkó’s art as well.
In 1988 he took part in the exhibition 20 Ungarische Künstler in Passau, which introduced Hungarian art to the international professional audience. Such international events played a crucial role in enabling Hungarian artists to enter global artistic discourse following the regime change [the Hungarian transition from state socialism to parliamentary democracy in 1989–90].
Historicism and multidisciplinary art
In September 1989 he served as chief organizer of the three-day National Visual Conference held in Zánka, while in June 1990 the Józsefváros Exhibition Hall hosted Akropolisz (Acropolis), a joint exhibition with István Kalmár. The material on display was on the frontiers of classical aesthetics and progressive art, characteristically combining the classical tradition of art history with contemporary modes of expression in line with postmodern historicising attitudes. What made the exhibition distinctive was that the visual elements were complemented by musical accompaniment and performance, creating a complex, multi-layered artistic experience. This fusion of historicism and performativity was also evident in their permanent cellar exhibition in Szentendre, the Ars Amandi Panoptikum, composed together with István Kalmár and consisting of forty-two plaster figures.
In the same year he also held a solo exhibition in Szeged at the Bartók Béla Cultural Centre, where the works on display could be placed in an international context along the lines of Postmodernism. The works presented at the Szeged exhibition clearly conveyed an intention to combine traditional tools of painting with a new, fresh mode of expression. The paintings sought to articulate emotional intensity and intellectual depth at the same time, while the artist continuously reflected on contemporary artistic discourse.
In 1991 he exhibited with István Kalmár at the Fortuna Gallery in Budapest under the title Négy egyszerű nap (lit. Four Simple Days), and his first writings appeared in the Művészet journal. From then on he published regularly on events in contemporary art in the Élet és Irodalom (lit. Life and Literature) journal and in Művészet (later Új Művészet (New Art)), becoming known also as an art writer and art critic.
Miami Art, Képzenélés (Image-Music)
In September 1992 he exhibited with István Kalmár at the Vigadó Gallery under the title Tűzivízi zene (lit. Fire-Water Music), and in December he took part, together with Márton Barabás and Albert Leskowsky, in the exhibition Kontrapunkt (Counterpoint) at the Ráday Museum in Kecskemét. The artists associated with the Kontrapunkt exhibition, linked to the Szentendre post-avant-garde, were strongly influenced by rock music, and Sinkó likewise translated his experiences as a musician into the works he presented. In this context, in 1992 he participated in a round-table discussion entitled Képzenélés (lit. Image-Music) within the framework of the Magyar Napló estek series, held amid the setting of the Tűzivízi zene exhibition. The participants (Péter György, István Sinkó, István Kalmár and László Bérczes) discussed the relationship between music and fine arts, and the contemporary artistic possibilities of audiovisuality.
In 1992 the Miami Art Fair and events at the Zinzen Gallery in Brussels provided Sinkó with the opportunity to present his work to an international audience. The Miami Art Fair, as an important venue for presenting contemporary artistic trends, marked a milestone in his career, so much so that the band he played in was named after this art fair. In the June issue of Művészet Sinkó published a detailed account of his impressions of the Miami Art Fair, noting that besides the artists sent by the Éri Gallery — István Kalmár, András Koncz and himself — there were no other Hungarian exhibitors at the festival.
Múzeumosdi (Playing Museum)
The first half of the 1990s brought significant developments for István Sinkó, who became an active participant in contemporary Hungarian artistic life not only as a painter but also as an educator. In 1993, he started a television programme with György Szemadám, launched on the TV1 channel under the title Múzeumosdi (lit. Playing Museum), to support young audiences in understanding and engaging with contemporary art. This initiative was preceded by Sinkó’s long-standing involvement with the GYIK Workshop, of which he had been a member since 1979 and later its leader. The workshop approached fine arts as a language that could be spoken and interpreted, a form of communication for young people, closely connected to music, movement, film and video art. This holistic approach enabled children to develop their own modes of creative expression across different artistic disciplines. Alongside this, Sinkó also engaged critically with the visual culture of contemporary media, publishing an article entitled Klip (Clip) on the visual language of music videos and the relationships between pop-cultural trends and high art.
Halott cselló (Dead Cello)
In July 1994, István Sinkó had a solo exhibition at the Horváth Endre Gallery in Balassagyarmat, which was followed by a joint exhibition with István Kalmár at the Újpest Gallery. The Balassagyarmat exhibition was opened by Gábor Lajta, who noted that the “drama of the naked body”, previously present in Sinkó’s paintings, had become more metaphorical and humorous, while musical instruments emerged as the central motif. Titles such as Hangszerek a vasgyárban (Instruments in the Steelworks), Csellószikla (Cello Rock), Vízben álló zongora (Piano Standing in Water) and Halott cselló (Dead Cello) evoke surrealist objects which, according to Lajta, “do not present the drama of the body in general, as in his earlier works, but specific bodies in specific environments, burdened with specific pasts and specific memories. We are in Central Europe, far from America or the boundless spaces of the East, and Sinkó remains faithful to this, just as he is to his gestures. Dim, confined rooms, faulty vaults, abandoned factories are his characteristic settings.” The art-historical position of this series may be defined by the postcolonial theoretical discourse that unfolded in the 1990s, as Sinkó reflects on the post-socialist past on the one hand, and articulates a sense of ‘belonging nowhere’ through his metaphorical instrument-bodies on the other hand. His reworked photographs from these years, such as Piranesi a belvárosban (Piranesi in the City Centre), probe the question of the authentic medium and further deconstruct the concept of photographic objectivity which had already been challenged in the Eastern Bloc in the 1970s.
Lávahangok (Lava Sounds)
In February 1995, the Dorottya Gallery hosted Lávahangok (Lava Sounds), a joint exhibition with Kalmár. The Dorottya Street gallery had always focused on contemporary art and served as a key venue for the experimental, fresh voices that emerged in the period following the regime change. The title Lávahangok was symbolic, alluding both to the artists’ dynamic and rebellious nature and to the ‘burning’ emotions and eruptive modes of expression present in their works. The occasion for the exhibition was the release of the Miami Art band’s new CD, also titled Lávahangok, which Ottó Csikor called “the first Hungarian fine art CD”. The exhibition presented five works by each artist, identical in size and technique, yet radically different in their approach to painting. According to Erzsébet Tatai, “while István Sinkó clearly continues Western traditions, István Kalmár’s paintings reveal a more Eastern, meditative, finely calligraphic mode of expression.” Tatai argues that the formal similarities of the works only further highlight this opposition while creating a mutually reinforcing contrast between the two artists. József Vadas likewise interprets the exhibition through their differences, while also emphasising the sense of community rooted in their shared love of music. At the same time Vadas assigns Sinkó a new position within art-historical reception by placing his work in Ernő Kállai’s bioromantic tradition.
Sinkó’s graphic works from the mid-1990s appeared strikingly novel in light of their reception history. According to László L. Menyhért, they represent a gestural, relaxed trend in painting emerging within the domain of ‘strict’ graphic art, alongside artists such as Péter Kovács and Tamás Kopasz.
Weapon instruments
In the spring of 1995, Sinkó and Kalmár opened a joint exhibition at the Vigadó Gallery titled Mélyhűtött zene (Deep-Frozen Music). In his response to the exhibition, György Szegő focused on the metaphysical depth of the works. “He assembles the orchestra of his exhibition from strange instruments, metaphysical in form but at the same time spewing blood and fire. There are no musicians, no people, on his canvases, only bizarre, imaginary, anthropomorphic instruments, playful yet threatening, primeval reptile-like monsters. In this way, the condemning judgement on ourselves can be articulated more freely.” The critic wrote this vividly about Sinkó’s weapon-instrument paintings, which the artist presented publicly for the first time at this exhibition. Music, Sinkó claims, is sublimated destruction, thus evoking Marinetti and the anti-art gestures of the Futurists. György Szemadám draws attention to the anthropomorphic aspects of the instrument motif, to the almost anthropomorphic piano-cello, and to those basic motifs that belong to the ‘essential nature’ of human existence.
In March 1995, Sinkó exhibited in Szekszárd at the House of the Arts together with three painters, Péter Gémes, István Kalmár and Károly Schnell, while his April exhibition titled Negyvennégy (Forty-Four) took place in the foyer of the Játékszín Theatre. This event was significant not only for its artistic value but also for its personal dimension, as it coincided with the artist’s forty-fourth birthday. By this time already a recognised figure on the art scene, István Sinkó celebrated the occasion surrounded by friends and admirers.
In April 1996, he presented his exhibition 6/b/n in the foyer of the Merlin Theatre, while in September the Gallery of the Szeged Youth Centre hosted another exhibition by István Sinkó, opened by György Szemadám.
His April 1997 exhibition sought to connect music and fine arts in an unconventional venue, the Salgótarján Music School. Locations of this kind were particularly important for Sinkó, as he maintained a close relationship with both music and children, and the musical instrument, above all the cello, became a key motif of this creative period. In September and October 1997, he held a solo exhibition at the Exhibition Hall of the Budapest Gallery, which marked one of the outstanding milestones of his artistic career. At the time the Budapest Gallery represented the pinnacle of the contemporary art canon in Hungary, and its spaces provided an appropriate framework for the dynamic and emotionally rich world of Sinkó’s paintings.
In April 1998 Sinkó took part in the group exhibition ÉS (And) at the Vízivárosi Gallery. The Élet és Irodalom journal regularly published reproductions of high-quality works of fine art, and this exhibition presented the works of contributing artists in their original form.
Watercourse
In the spring of 1999, once again at the Vízivárosi Gallery, István Sinkó exhibited together with Miklós Ganzhaug (1946–2020), and the exhibition was opened by Péter Sinkovits. In Sinkovits’s interpretation, the emphasis fell on the new ‘water’ paintings, on the emergence of the water motif. He argued that the constantly searching artist, through the theme of flowing water, had arrived at a guiding motif that was “strong enough to set his visual vocabulary in motion.” During a trip to Leeds, Sinkó encountered a canal network whose watercourse, alternately surfacing and disappearing, captured his imagination. As Péter Sinkovits put it: “His painterly machinery was set in motion by the flowing water; he sought out enigmatic routes and corridors sinking into depth. A true graphic artist, a master of sketches, for whom the recorded sight matures into a true vision in the painting. This happened here as well, the outlined environment, with its complex spatial relations and water racing through corridors.”
In February 2001 he once again presented his works together with István Kalmár at the Dorottya Gallery, under the same title as six years earlier, Lávahangok (Lava Sounds). In the spring, the Vigadó Gallery hosted another joint exhibition with Kalmár entitled Áttűnések a térben (Transitions in Space). The notion of ‘transition’ referred both to the stimulating questions surrounding the relationship between spatial forms and painting and to the different yet complementary visual worlds of Kalmár and Sinkó.
In March 2002 his solo exhibition Arkhétektúra (Archetecture) opened at the B32 Gallery. The exhibited acrylic paintings, watercolours and lithographs revolved around the theme of water, and were analysed with insight by László Hemrik. He emphasised that water is a particularly apt medium for Sinkó, “through which he can say everything important he has learned about painting, about art, about the workings of the world, and everything he considers important to reveal about himself.” The works shown here occupy an art-historically significant place in Hungarian painting around the turn of the millennium, as the surging water can be interpreted through the aesthetic category of the sublime and may also be defined as a form of mood painting.
In 2003 he again exhibited abroad, this time in Ottawa, and then, further developing the water theme, presented his exhibition Aquametria (Aquametry) at the Budapest Gallery. By the time of his 2005 exhibition of water-themed paintings at the Pataky Gallery, his connection to the aesthetic of the sublime, threatening and awe-inspiring at the same time, was articulated with particular clarity. “The omnipresent water, even the water of a swimming pool, appears as if it were just about to burst into some basement or underground chamber, while the outstretched arm of the swimmer spasmodically searches for something to hold on to. Those bony, rigid fingers suggest a universal fear, and the rushing water a cosmic threat. The threat of natural forces, but also of violent ideologies.”
In October 2006 he had a joint exhibition with Valéria Sóváradi at the Vízivárosi Gallery. Sóváradi, previously active as a textile artist, now appeared with paintings, her style and attitude aligning her work with the Sensaria group. István Sinkó’s dramatic, eruptive paintings entered into a compelling dialogue with Sóváradi’s calmer, more contemplative works. By this time Sinkó’s central motif had for years been water, just as earlier it had been the musical instrument, a motif that, like the human soul, exists in a state of perpetual change and ceaseless flow. “It is eternal change, like life itself, a symbolic painterly tool of the search for identity,” as his critic wrote. As a great forerunner in art history, one may recall Leonardo’s late, apocalyptic water studies and the representations of nature in Romantic painting.
Álommunka (Dreamwork)
His next major exhibition took place at the Symbol Art Gallery in 2011 under the title Álompárok (Dream Pairs). This exhibition marked another turning point in his career, as after the themes of the musical instrument and water, Sinkó once again introduced a new focus: dreams. The theme, together with the visionary mode of seeing, as Zoltán Somhegyi has also pointed out, evokes German Romanticism, above all the painting of Caspar David Friedrich. The works arranged in pairs were similar yet different, instinctive yet consciously composed. This ‘baroque’, dramatically counterbalancing approach is characteristic of Sinkó’s artistic attitude, which he has applied consistently since the beginning of his career and which may be regarded as his most important and enduring stylistic trait. The artistic value of the Álom (Dream) series lay in his ability to elevate the subjective theme of his own dreams to a collective level and to expand it into one of symbolic significance.
The dream concept was continued in the 2015 exhibition Álommunka (lit. Dreamwork) at the Újlipótváros Gallery. The twenty works shown (Álom a falról (Dream of the Wall), Álomtöredék (Dream Fragment), etc.) revolve around the notion of dreamwork familiar from psychology, seeking answers to where the boundary lies between dream and reality, between the sleeping, unconsciously dreaming and the conscious, awake states of our personality. As with water, Sinkó once again turns to a motif favoured by Romanticism through the theme of the dream, as he draws a parallel between natural, external forces and the instinctive, inner forces of the human being. As Anica Rudolf formulates it, “in his visual dream book” Sinkó does not evoke concrete dream scenes but rather intimations, moments and moods. “The first instant after waking, that moment when the memory of the dream slips away, dissolves and fades. The boundary between dream and awakening, the crossing from there to here, after which nothing remains but the impression.”
Within frames
In the spring of 2017, an exhibition titled Szemrevételezés (Inspection) opened at the Artézi Gallery. His increasingly abstract visual language stands in a paradoxical relationship with the exhibition title, since this is no longer a matter of perceptual observation but rather of opening a third or inner eye, the full unfolding of an imaginary mode of vision. He is increasingly preoccupied with transience and death as artistic themes, which is why the documentation of the Vác mummies in the museum and the systems of relations between the living and the dead found in Japanese films move to the foreground of his interest. Judit Faludy aptly points out the role of frames in these works: “The drawing of frames, and then stepping beyond them, being outside the frame, is an essential element of the message of the painter. Temporal and spatial frames determine both focus and abstraction.” The window frame, incidentally, also leads us back to Romanticism, more precisely to the painting of Friedrich, and connects the ontological roots of István Sinkó’s painting to the Romantic tradition.
László Hemrik wrote an insightful review of István Sinkó’s 2021 exhibition Etüdök fényre (Studies for Light), held at the Józsefvárosi Gallery. Hemrik summarises Sinkó’s oeuvre to date and links his style to two fundamental characteristics: on the one hand, a choice of subject matter rich in cultural references, such as primordial elements, musical instruments and frames, which are “typically formations of the cultural consciousness of Western civilisation”; on the other hand, a “vehement yet intimate, material and technical character.” This exhibition marks a turning point in Sinkó’s career, as for the first time he moves away from traditional technical procedures and starts experimenting with prints: he draws and paints onto images taken with a mobile phone and then printed, creating an intriguing medial effect. The large-scale prints once again explore a culturally charged theme, this time the garden, while the framing is provided by geometric forms stretched in front of the gardens, recalling Japanese folding screens.
In 2021 he had two major exhibitions, and also edited, together with Róbert Nátyi, a book on the art of Árpád Szabados.
Kicsuk, benyit (Shut out, step in)
Kicsuk, benyit (lit. Shut out, step in), an exhibition held at the Érd Gallery, can also be read as an ars poetica. According to Gábor Pataki, the two verbs refer to István Sinkó’s character, rebellious and socially engaged, and at the same time inward-looking, focused solely on art. The acrylic paintings, rich in calligraphic and geometric elements, may be interpreted as a synthesis of his oeuvre to date, as they process the history of influences shaping his art and articulate his artistic position. However, as Gábor Pataki also points out, these works are not didactic or moralising in the slightest, but rather flickering memories of stages in his own creative career, of fellow painters and friends. Images ‘without dilemmas’.
Disztópia Celestis (Dystopia Celestis)
The exhibition Jelek, kis képek (lit. Signs, Small Images), organised on the occasion of his 70th birthday, reflects similar conclusions while, beyond summing up what had been done before, it also hints at the future and points towards a new experimental field: the world of photography and digital art.
An unquestionable milestone in entering the art-historical canon is an artist’s opportunity to exhibit at the Kunsthalle. In the case of István Sinkó, this took place in August 2022, characteristically in a canon-breaking, cliché-discarding manner: at the peak of his career he took a major risk and, entering a field entirely new to him, exhibited exclusively prints. At this point he further developed the Japanese garden series and produced an additional eleven works using a special technique, manipulating photographs taken of television screens, thereby evoking the phenomenon known from the Baroque as the black mirror, a soft world of shadows perceived through a dark reflective surface.
We arrive at the present day with three major exhibitions: Rajzok, karcok, nyomatok (Drawings, Scratches, Prints) at K Gallery, Unexpected Journey at Kahan Art Space, and the most recent one, Disztópia Celestis (Dystopia Celestis), at FUGA. Rajzok, karcok, nyomatok – as its title already suggests – consisted exclusively of graphic works and placed Sinkó’s decades-old motif, the window or window frame, into a dense network of graphic lines, bringing this constructive, angular form into dialogue with imprints of waste materials and seemingly accidental surfaces. With these drawings, Sinkó returned to the beginnings of his artistic career, to gestural, bold, graphic surfaces and to a dramatic mode of expression that probes more general human questions. The exhibition Unexpected Journey once again highlighted Sinkó’s long-standing and inescapably important attachment to Romanticism as a source of inspiration. This time he explored the relationship between nature, landscape and artwork from the perspective of his own art, seeking an answer to the question of how a painter, a creative individual, responds to an unexpected situation in life, an unplanned and unusual event. Unexpectedness and the lack of prior planning place the painter in a transgressive situation that calls for unexpected artistic solutions. In reality, the subject of these works is the artist himself and the analysis of artistic intuition.
Teaches, directs, organises
The final exhibition at FUGA articulates apocalyptic visions, but also resolves them within a positive outlook for the future. Although the artist decodes the climate crisis, wars and the natural and human values collapsing before our very eyes, he does not offer the usual response, nor does he bury humanity beneath an apocalyptic tsunami reminiscent of the Trecento. István Sinkó, an incurable optimist, believes that humanity exists, has existed and will continue to exist. No matter how madly, how erratically and hopelessly foolishly, it nevertheless proceeds along its own path. Sinkó is forgiving and, through the noblest means of art, guides us towards a more ethical future.
It would be hard to summarise his artistic career more beautifully or more precisely than in Gábor Pataki’s words outlining the personality of István Sinkó:
“He teaches, directs, organises, opens exhibitions, writes criticism, makes music; his activity spans the entire spectrum of the scene, and he is connected in one way or another with hundreds of fine artists, from elderly masters to students of free schools. And with elemental curiosity, sometimes with subtle sensitivity, sometimes with pedagogical tact, he turns towards each of them, always with the intention of understanding.”
[2024]