For several decades, Gábor Véssey has belonged to the leading figures of the Hungarian fine art scene. He is an artist of exceptional productivity – his oeuvre includes several hundred pastels, approximately one hundred oil paintings, and some thirty-five to forty gouaches, alongside an almost countless number of graphic works. He regularly produces drawings for literary works, creates series of illustrations, and publishes graphic albums.
He graduated from the painting department of the Képzőművészeti Főiskola (Hungarian College of Fine Arts, now: Hungarian University of Fine Arts) in 1972, and continued his studies in the framework of a master class until 1975. Among his teachers he names Barcsay and Ernő Fischer, as well as Géza Fónyi – a student of Ágost Benkhard, painter of easel pictures and mosaic artist – and Sándor László Veress, known primarily for his figurative works. From 1988 to 2017 he taught descriptive geometry, drawing and anatomy as an associate professor at the Képzőművészeti Egyetem (Hungarian University of Fine Arts).
In the years following his studies he worked mainly in graphics, later increasingly turning to pastel as well. Parallel to this, he consistently produced oil paintings, and, as a form of relaxation, sculptures, plaques and small-scale plastic works.
According to his own account, his principal works include the artworks reinterpreting Rouault (Napos délelőtt [Sunny Morning]), Cézanne (Vörös hasáb [Red Prism]) and Watteau's Gilles (The Clown) (measuring 360 × 320 cm), as well as the homage to Bacon (Tükör és anamorfikus szív [Mirror and Anamorphic Heart]) and the pastel series entitled Van Gogh epitáfium (Van Gogh Epitaph), which he later also painted in oil.
Gábor Véssey is a versatile artist whose organisational abilities are noteworthy alongside his artistic activity. From 1989 to 1993, he was a founding member of the Kerengő Galéria (Kerengő Gallery), which operated in the Jáki Chapel of Vajdahunyad Castle. In 1996, he participated in the establishment of the Hon-Lét-Fríz group. Together with friends and fellow artists, he created several large-scale collective works. The 16 × 5 metre canvas panel entitled Hon-Lét-Fríz, related to the theme of the Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian Basin, was produced by sixteen artists in the set-design painting workshop of the Operaház (Hungarian State Opera House), and was subsequently exhibited at the Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum (Hungarian Museum of Agriculture) on the occasion of the Millennium celebrations. A documentary film on the creation of the work was also broadcast by the MTV programme Donátor. Towards the end of the decade, during the decorative works of the Saint Stephen Chapel in the village of Szanticska (Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County), he undertook the creation of tondos depicting the deeds of King Saint Stephen, together with Károly Elekes, József Gaál, György Jovián and József Szurcsik.
His works are generally characterised by heightened drama, inner tension and a self-critical tone imbued with irony, realised through a distinctive line quality and a caricatural mode of expression. His activity is not confined exclusively to the visual arts – his metaphorical compositions, their varied modes of presentation, the stylistic diversity of his work, and the literary-quality texts accompanying his exhibitions all indicate an aspiration to create harmony between artistic disciplines. He makes no distinction between painting and film, music and literature, as all serve a single purpose: “the innermost essence of all art is poetry – and here, naturally, I do not mean written poetry alone, but poetic quality itself. That associative, visionary force standing above genres, which, beyond all reason and knowledge, illuminates existence through the artist’s personality in such a way that it – despite its well-known contradictions – is sublimated into the transcendent,” he writes in his essay Rajzolás közben (While Drawing), which he read aloud at the presentation of his Apollinaire album.
“To see, in the true and fullest sense, to comprehend and feel the scattered phenomena of the world, then to grasp their simultaneity and give form to them in this poetic material, moreover in such a way that this shaping does not alter things in their natural state or their self-identity, yet still presents them to us in a new quality.”
In order to facilitate the fixation of this ‘new quality’, a recurring element of Véssey’s representational mode is the metaphor applied on the pictorial plane, the use of which allows for extraordinarily nuanced interpretative possibilities. The birth of the image is in part the product of the subconscious act of the creative process, which imperceptibly influences the viewer’s mood.
Véssey’s expressive and dreamlike visions, at times radiating melancholy, at others burdened with a premonition of tragedy, are ‘passionate self-examinations’ that map the instinctual world concealed beneath the surface and the ‘spiritual spheres’ through unusual associative imagery. A striking addition to the compositions, which seem to contradict the laws of gravity and remain in constant motion, is the presence of geometric elements; through the encircling lines around figures distorted by surging inner energy, they evoke a sense of restlessness and disintegration, pointing towards formal reduction and abstraction. Characteristic features of his impulsive compositions include purified forms, occasionally sharp contours and a sfumato-like technique, visionary figures, and the constant alternation of obscure, fleeting or improbable details. This continuously present, undulating transformation fills the works with intense tension within the ‘floating yet concrete, still translucent atmosphere of the in-between state’. At the same time, they often evoke impressions in the viewer that cannot necessarily be articulated in words, while their explicit meaning recedes into obscurity. What remains is a peculiar sensation, as if we had encountered it long ago – within ourselves. “My works … are passionate self-examinations. I do not believe they are decipherable or explicable in a literary sense. Their creation is often inspired by nothing more than a sound, a thought, or a ray of light…” At the same time, “this is not a kind of graphic automatism drifting on the waters of chaos, but rather the process mentioned by Jung, which does not content itself with the mere emergence of images, but attempts to meditate upon them in an objective sense”.
His pictures are often sombre and melancholic, reflecting solitude and loneliness (particularly in the case of his Baudelaire illustrations), though at times – especially in his mythological works – they may be described as almost serene.
“To see, one requires a certain distance – that is, space. Space shifts in time, the present seems to move away from us, slowly passing into the past, and is increasingly illuminated by spiritual light. One strand of this light is melancholy, the awareness and proof of transience within us, which reminds us of the infinite and, within it, of the singular moment. Therefore, all freedom, and thus all true art, is also deeply moving.”
This ‘spiritual light’ also appears in his works with biblical themes, on which he has been working since the early 1990s – most recently he has drawn several sheets inspired by the Revelation of John. From earlier periods, we may recall his bronze reliefs depicting Noah’s Ark, the story of Saint Peter, and the Expulsion, or his series Száz rajz a Bibliához (One Hundred Drawings for the Bible). His relationship to faith is grounded in Christianity, yet the influence of other religions (for example Buddhism through the Tibetan Book of the Dead) and Greek mythology (such as his treatment of the story of Ixion) is also perceptible in his art.
“Everyone can be redeemed!” – this, too, may be discerned in Véssey’s painting, which – even if it may be misunderstood today – is religious art. Yet it is not religious and Christian in the sense of incorporating ideas or canons into form, as is generally the case in old and new religious art. Essentially, it is religious in that, on the one hand, it deals with fundamental religious contents – humility, prayer, ecstasy, suffering – and, decisively, it continually illuminates the most vulnerable human relationships through the means of painting. For religion means that the spirit (not reason!) “is capable of restraining demons,” wrote Gábor Lajta in his essay A képzelet folyóírása (The Continuous Script of Imagination). Those demons, the ‘apocryphal beings’, which also appear in Véssey’s bestiaries. In the introduction to his exhibition Vörös és fekete (Red and Black), the artist himself offers the following supplication:
“Almighty One! – who in these days allow us to see only the mute heroic gestures of your earthly vicar in the light of a distant window, ‘grant me a happier song’, grant us the calm of peace, the true power of beauty, which, as is well known, is the possibility of truth perceived through the power of faith, the path of true love, which is not so much a feeling as the very force of cognition itself, what is called the path of the righteous, which begins with the dawning of morning and does not cease until full noon. Amen.”
In 2004, Gábor Véssey was awarded the prestigious Rome Scholarship – he spent two months at the Római Magyar Intézet (Hungarian Academy in Rome) located at via Giulia 1, housed in the Palazzo Falconieri. Reflecting on this period, he writes:
“Everything is covered, interwoven with light… Being appears simultaneously distant and natural, dramatic, here everyday life is in continuous contact with millennia… Being, existence here is that form, that beloved and sacred practice in which every human matter may experience and recognise its own nature. Naturally, without conditions, freely, the personal can speak, and the insight and acknowledgement of continuity – that is, the continuity of existence, of everything that has passed, shaped us, imposed itself upon us, or even formed us at the level of future possibility – is here self-evident. Mediterranean existence is ultimately illusion, tangible delight and spiritual truth at once – that is, fulfilment.”
He had already participated in a group exhibition in Rome in 2002 with his printed graphics, organised by the association of etching artists, and he has also had several highly successful exhibitions at other international venues, above all in Germany, the Netherlands and New York. The Cologne-based Galerie Grosser Bachem mounted an exhibition of his pastels in 1988, shortly before the political transition, entitled Hatvan rajz (Sixty Drawings). In 1995, his graphics and film drawings were exhibited at Galerie Zichy in Leiden. In 1997, Galerie Thriller in Saarbrücken presented twenty-four of his gouache nudes. That same year an exhibition of his Bible drawings opened at the Gallery OMO, the gallery of the Hungarian Consulate in New York. In 2002, he again exhibited gouache works at the Luca Art Galerie in Wiesbaden, followed by large-scale pastels at Gallery Port of Call in New York. Alongside his solo exhibitions, he also took part in numerous group exhibitions abroad. In 1982, his works were shown at the 2nd International Youth Drawing Biennial in Nuremberg, followed the next year by an exhibition at the Rathaus Galerie in Gauting. In 1989, he participated in the Bari Art Fair with his pastel Bestiárium (Bestiary). He subsequently exhibited in Nijmegen and at the Galerie Rathaus in Bonn. Before the turn of the millennium he showed work in Amsterdam, Dortmund, at Galerie Schloss in Dillingen, and in Brussels. In 2000 and 2002, he was again seen in New York, first at the Hungarian Embassy, then at the Manhattan Graphics Center.
Already in 1997, he spent three weeks in New York, and he still recalls with pleasure its diverse culture, colourful bustle and vibrant artistic life. At the Metropolitan Museum, he was able to see Francis Bacon’s profane Self-Portrait Triptych. Two years later he visited Bacon’s major exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. The affinity with neo-expressionist tendencies is evident in Véssey’s art, yet Bacon was not the only major influence – he also considers Dutch painting to be formative, and is particularly captivated by the works of Van Gogh. By his own account, his ‘supporters and encouragers’ included the works of Manet, Goya’s graphic sheets, Giacometti’s existentialist figuration, but above all the poetry of Baudelaire and the sacred metaphysics of Béla Hamvas.
Although stylistically he does not closely align himself with painters such as Károly Ferenczy, Lajos Gulácsy, József Rippl-Rónai, László Mednyánszky or Béla Egry, he has always regarded their careers as exemplary. Likewise, unforgettable works of cinema have exerted a strong influence on his art. From the early 1990s onwards, certain immortal masterpieces of Italian neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema also appear in his works.
He does not produce self-portraits, though he has occasionally recognised his own features in some of his figures. Recurring motifs include the heart, organic forms and rigid geometric shapes. A frequently appearing element is a geometric form reminiscent of ‘ectoplasm’ attached to the mouths of his figures, a paraphrase of the speech scrolls found in medieval painting. His works are also characterised by a complete absence of symmetry.
In connection with his images, one may recall the concept of non finito, first appearing in Wölfflin’s stylistic typology, which refers to the rejection of formal closure and the creation of the ‘open work’. Although this method often gives the impression of incompleteness, the structural openness of the compositions allows for multiple interpretations. It is also striking how, in the seemingly chaotic compositions dominated by melancholic, disintegrating, flowing and floating figures that dazzle the eye due to blurred contour lines, angular and strictly geometric shapes emerge as a counterpoint, creating structural balance behind the illusion of incompleteness. The inclusion of sharply concrete geometric forms is no coincidence, since from 1988 onwards Gábor Véssey, as a lecturer in descriptive geometry at the Magyar Képzőművészeti Egyetem (Hungarian University of Fine Arts), was also a specialist in proportionality…
Gábor Véssey has developed a highly individual visual language, in which “refined, poetic use of colour is repeatedly intertwined with a kind of symbolic, ornamental and calligraphic expression”. He frequently works in pastel, yet repeatedly returns to oil painting, which may be regarded as the richest in expressive possibilities. His palette has shown no essential changes over the course of his career. The colours of the Dresden Expressionists appear in his works, though lightened – red becomes pink, viridian lighter, while lemon yellow, ochre, cyclamen, blood red or viridian often blend with grey, producing impossible colour effects and obscure moods. His powerful handling of colour, based on constant contrasts, is a defining feature of his art. “The sensuous armour of colour, the paint with its half-dried lava-crust surface, conceals drama.” Or, as the artist himself puts it in relation to his exhibition Vörös és fekete (Red and Black): “I therefore decided: ‘then let it be ROUGE ET NOIR! Let it be RED and let it be BLACK! For life and death! Heart and mourning. Snobbish irony, elegant parable, taut metaphor. Passion and icy alienation. Drama cubed, Central European execution ballet. Swamp world, disdainful revulsion, spleen. At the same time, the invincible desire for freedom, and throughout self-respect, and throughout a dream-seeing, strong self-awareness.’”
He generally employs strong contours and sharp contrasts in the formation of shapes as well – elongated figures with sharp outlines often alternate with blurred, soft, rounded forms. His impulsive figures sometimes seem on the verge of exploding, at other times they radiate inwardness, solitude, asexuality; sometimes they embrace one another, at other times the composition falls apart. In raw visions, anthropomorphic and amorphous figuration alternate in chaotic disorder, often seeming to melt together in the contorted poses of tormented fantastical human and animal figures or puppet-like beings whose original nature was never clearly definable. Some figures appear to carry their dead twin, or even their own heart, on their bodies; hunched monkeys, hyenas, dolphins, strange birds with menacingly sharp beaks, bald-headed, distorted men(?) dissolve into a grotesque primordial chaos.
As Gábor Lajta writes in his essay A képzelet folyósítása (The Liquefaction of Imagination), Véssey’s images are soul-images: “revelations of instinctual being permeated by light and cut through again and again by geometry… Through many years of consistent work, however, Véssey has arrived at a point where he draws and paints as a poet writes verse. From his hand emerges a series of metaphors: the leg becomes a dolphin, man a lamb, the pig a man, the arm a pipe, the heart a machine, the sexual organ a heart, the body an empty shadow-vessel, speech a dagger, and so on, all the way to unfathomable forms that play with us like indecipherable shadows seen in a dark room.”
It is as if a pulsating jumble had been cast into a gigantic melting pot. As if everything were melting and disintegrating, shedding its old skin and flesh, transmuting and rematerialising to continue existing in another form. And yet, despite their agitation, tension and contortion, these compositions are images that radiate sensitivity and beauty – acting as ironic, distorted mirrors of our existence.
But what are these works really about? “I hope (at least in a literary sense) about nothing,” says Gábor Véssey. “Because to be about something is only possible in the language of literature, and on the level of narrative. And in the end, every story is banal. Only the relationship to it can be interesting. The story that points beyond itself, surpasses itself, annihilates itself – that alone can be an interesting story.”
[2014]