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Here we are.
It is one of my ateliers, the other one comes afterwards.
We will go upstairs.
What I like is that Csontváry's cedar is here, in front of me.
Can you see it?
The window is dirty but it is good for me.
It provides filtered light.
I have not touched the window for 30 years.
Can you see the cedar?
Judit, do you paint here on the floor?
In both ateliers.
But I usually paint on the floor in the other room.
You see, the entire guano series was created by itself on the floor.
I folded the ruined paintings and put them in a corner.
Then I opened them,
I put them on the ground facing upwards,
so I walked on the painted pictures for years.
You were on the exhibition yesterday or before, weren't you?
There is a bronze spiral.
Do you remember?
I can show it to you.
This bronze spiral…
Fossilization.
What is the expression?
We call them fossils.
It became a fossil.
Centre de Dominance.
It was the name of the series.
Kálmán has one.
Center of Dominance.
Yes.
It was always similar, of cosmic nature.
If one was ruined, I put it on the ground.
The Écriture en masse and this series were put on the ground.
Because there you cannot…
It is like Chinese painting.
It cannot be corrected.
It is there, ready.
It is either good or not.
So hundreds were thrown away.
By them and by me too.
The situation is that when it is ruined,
I put it on the ground.
I fold it and I put it back as a protective layer in the atelier.
Before the atelier,
I was lent apartments, later for money too,
where there was parquet floor.
Well, I had to cover it.
That's where the idea came from, by itself.
I have many ruined paintings,
and it is beyond my strength financially.
There are a lot of ruined paintings.
So I put them on the ground as a cover.
I saw that it is interesting.
Even then it seemed interesting.
I was walking on them for 4-6 years,
and an incredibly rich sediment appeared, the guano.
Attila József.
It came to me by itself.
Thank you, Attila József, thank you, you helped me a lot.
At the edge of the city.
You surely know it.
Slowly falling…
How does it go?
Like…
like…
like guano.
Slowly falling at the periphery…
The smoke from chimneys.
Because there was no one to consider poor people
who breathed in the smoke and dirt
throughout their entire lives.
So it is Attila József.
And the Centre de dominance, the fossilization and the guano.
You see, it is the same in everything for me.
I take back old, ruined paintings,
even if I leave it on the frame,
I take it back and paint again.
Downstairs I will show you.
A conservator writing a thesis about me.
There are the series, a microscopic shot,
and you can see the works, even 20 years of work.
Geological, always geological strata…
What it is called…
Layers.
Geological layers together.
What is it here in the back, this nook?
Is it only for storing paintings?
There are paintings here too.
Paintings.
It came back from Hungary,
behind these too,
all of them came back from Hungary,
or the museum from Soissons.
I cannot really show you now…
This one also came back from Budapest.
Now if you are interested, this is from '47,
I tried to do socialist realism.
Of course they did not accept it.
Can you see it?
They did not accept it because it did not meet the requirements of Zhdanov.
Moreover, it was rather…
How to say it…
It was rather a Giotto, or an Italian.
It was a failure.
Did you like doing it or it was compulsory?
For me it was interesting
because I did not do what they had asked for.
That's why it was not successful there, but for me, it was interesting.
I did not like it but it was also a transition.
Can you see this small picture?
Record it because it is very important.
Mine is next to it.
Can you see the one on the right?
Yes.
Tetrarchs.
How do you call it?
They are on Place Saint-Marc.
St. Mark's Square in Venice.
Human-sized statues.
Porphyre rouge. Red porphyry.
Four emperors.
It is called Tetrarchs because there were four emperors of Rome.
Around the end of the second century.
It was made in Egypt from the porphyry.
It is its model.
Can you see it?
Even the head of the bird is there, but I changed it a bit.
Like Picasso's pigeon.
Do you remember it?
So it is the interesting in art.
That it is not created by one person.
It arches through generations, eras, civilizations.
Everything is gathered.
It is almost 2000 years old.
It made me born again.
At home they did not accept it because they were outside.
They did not know what socialism is.
There is no socialism at all.
So for me it was interesting to do it.
Because of this.
My Italian experience.
A two-year Italian experience.
But socialist realism was completely against me
and I was always completely against it.
That's why I tried to change it for better.
It was hopeless.
What did I do?
I left the country.
In the greatest danger, across the Iron Curtain.
Exactly owing to this.
Because I did not want to accept the requirements
and because of the things they wanted me to make.
Stalin-heads, Rákosi-heads…
I wanted to use a dirty word to describe his head.
No.
You surely know it.
Now it has been enough, let's go upstairs to look at the other one.
Unfortunately most of them are wrapped, there we will find some.
Let's be careful
not to disturb the equipment.
Be careful here.
Are these your favourite pictures? Your favourite pictures?
Pardon?
Are these your favourite pictures?
No.
It is absolutely accidental.
Not at all.
These were taken accidentally.
There were 40 paintings here.
Kálmán took out everything.
He even did the vacuum cleaning.
He is very nice.
And these stayed here.
My favourite paintings are rather deposited at the gallery,
in the museum of Soissons, at Gorelli.
But there are a few here too.
There is one here.
It is also good.
There are some that I keep, though.
Do you paint here on the ground, Judit?
The guanos were born here.
And in the other room.
Now it is covered but they are down here.
These are old, can you see?
Yes.
These are old paintings.
I took them down, hundreds of them,
and I was walking on them for years, waste was falling.
It is guano.
This sediment.
The bronze spiral you saw.
It has become thick.
It was thin. Well, relatively thin.
So it was difficult for me physically.
I did everything myself,
you saw the frames,
I made them myself.
I made the priming myself,
or there was no priming,
it was floating on the wall freely
and I made the writing there.
When the writing was still fresh,
I put it down here
and like a flood,
10 litres of thin acrylic was put on.
Sometimes with granular aluminium powder
or bronze powder or sand, very fine sand.
That's how the painting was created.
If it did not succeed,
I threw it away or started writing again on another one,
It created the Déroulement,
but unfortunately I cannot show any here and now.
Was it here when the aluminium powder…
It is already a bit different, the Hydrogen afterwards.
It is the next series.
But in the gallery there is one,
and there should be here too but I don't know where.
The Déroulment has six-metre high paintings in the back.
Six metres.
How many paintings are there here?
Do you know?
160.
We have counted it.
I had to count it.
But I have already thrown away at least 500 throughout my life.
Even more.
There are many painters working, which is good,
but they do not throw anything away, which is very bad.
A lot of pictures are kept.
But these are not such paintings, aren't these?
The ones I have by me,
I do not guarantee…
I am the only judge.
I am free to say that I would like to keep this or that.
But I have thrown away a lot.
I was working on these.
These are all paintings.
Kálmán saw some folded here.
Hundreds.
Then a dear farmer friend of mine took them…
How do you call it?
The large machine that…
Tractor.
Tractors. It is the right word.
He took them.
80 were burnt.
I had 80 paintings burnt.
I was so glad.
They were stored by the neighbour,
the house was sold and I could not store here another 80.
Some are stored by museums.
I am almost drowning here.
There are too many.
In the gallery there are 60.
Look, this large, which is only a pigment,
how do you say it?
Colour?
Pigment?
It is granular.
It is not very fine, smooth.
It is not a smooth paint, but a rough base.
It is used to paint houses and large buildings.
So it is granular, black powder is crushed.
It is not a smooth powder, it is better for me.
They mix it with l'huile.
Oil?
Linseed oil.
Craftsmen, construction workers, fine painters
add all kinds of vernis and lacquers
that make the painting smooth.
I do not use these.
I use it this way.
Here you can see this one.
These large black ones are all made of it.
It is very cheap.
Everyone told that it would be ruined after some years.
It is perfectly preserved.
For artists who use thick black or white fine paint,
the works all shrivel and crack.
Why?
For me, these dried up as a block, slowly.
Therefore I always had to work on 10-20 paintings.
Due to drying.
Do you understand?
Or I threw it away immediately if it was not good.
So it is a really special method,
which was good for me because it was very cheap,
I could work with it without problems,
10 or 20 or 100 times cheaper than the other painters,
because I made it myself.
I bought 100 meters of canvas,
and thereby I could work.
What I am surprised and glad about, that it is very good regarding ageing.
It does not age.
The error is always due to delivery.
Not on this, but that next one.
During a delivery to Germany, once there was an accident,
and several paintings of the series damaged.
Perhaps you will see it.
They require significant restoration.
Which colour do you use the most for painting?
Is there any? Or not?
I don't know.
I can tell you one:
I use ground colours.
I never mix paint.
It is always clean.
I add several layers delicately.
It was called glazing colour back in Hungary at college.
I add more layers, or it is ready at once,
it is also possible.
There are infinite variations.
On Guano, there are a plenty of layers.
Created for 10 years.
And sometimes it is ready alla prima.
It is alla prima.
So my answer is:
there is no one colour, but only ground colours.
As you can see: red, blue,
green is very rare because it is not really a ground colour,
so red, blue, white, black, yellow.
You can also see.
Purple is very rare, but sometimes appears.
But there are not any mixtures.
I never mix the paint with white, never.
This method is absolutely far from me.
Sometimes even repulsive.
Okay.
So these four.
Yellow, in variations,
but almost always one variation that you have already seen,
red, shades of red,
blue, azure from ultramarine, there are variations there too.
What else have I mentioned? Yellow, red, blue…
Black.
Black, white.
White.
Here is the '56 series,
I guess it is called the Outburst.
Éclatement.
Perhaps Outburst is the correct term.
It was created by throwing,
throwing the paint in bulks,
the black.
Afterwards I used this tool,
it was at that time very flexible, more delicate,
it has completely fossilized since then, it has stiffened.
It is very heavy.
So I used it this way.
That's it.
So first I put on a proposition,
I don't know, perhaps this expression is not right,
and then I ruin it.
This ruined pattern creates the painting.
This outburst, or destruction…
How do you say it?
Destruction.
It creates the painting.
It is strange.
It is an entire series.
It is one tool,
there is another, which I mostly used for smaller ones.
These large lines…
I could also use this sometimes.
I use both hands.
Rather the more delicate, surrealist, surrealist abstract paintings.
You perhaps used it for automatic writing, didn't you?
Yes, but sometimes smaller ones.
I can perfectly use it too, using both hands.
Like this.
And what is it? What is this tool?
It is a curtain rod.
I guess it is copper.
Because where I use it, copper appears.
Curtain rod, that I bent myself.
It was long, and I broke it down.
It is broken down.
This way I found exactly what I needed,
from a long rod.
It provided, especially in the surrealist ones,
unfortunately here there aren't any,
but there is reproduction,
you know it,
you have one.
Those shapes in the space that move plastically,
they are created at once.
Plasticité, the form.
It is already more brutal, the outburst.
Why was it important
that you do not paint with brushes but with such tools?
It was not important,
I could not do it in any other ways.
Did not you have brushes?
I had, but I could not do it in any other ways.
Brushes were not good, they are too soft.
What was good for impressionists, in Renaissance,
was not good for me.
I will tell you why.
Somehow I always like engraving.
When something is engraved in some form.
Like stones were engraved in the past.
Or tablettes d'argile.
The clay tablets from Babylon.
You know: Sumer, Babylon.
You know those tablets they engraved.
It is rather exactly this method.
They took something and engraved it, pressed it in.
For me, it is suitable.
It is also similar.
Not painting traditionally.
Gathering it and cutting some parts of it.
It is rather similar to sculptures, from the perspective
that there is a block and they cut parts of it.
Michelangelo cut a lot.
The sculpture was born in a way that he cut parts of a large stone.
The writings, which are always important for me,
from Sumer and Babylon to Greece and Egypt,
they are all engraved, drawn into.
Into the stone or soft…
How do you say it?
Clay.
That's why I needed it.
I made it myself.
The brushes were there, ready, I bought them.
Brushes are not expensive.
No. It was too soft.
All these cut, square-like…
All the spheres that it forms if you use it well and practice a lot…
So what I needed, I could achieve in space.
Plastic forms.
That cannot be created with brushes.
It was good until Matisse.
And now it was not.
So you need to find a new way of expression
for a new form.
From a perspective
art is the reflection of the century.
Today's century is so mechanized, that even if I do it with my hands,
from a perspective another tool is entered,
that is more suitable.
For me, somehow metal is also suitable.
So perhaps this is the answer.