Heves megyei aprónyomtatványok 19/H
W hen creating, Imre SZILÁGYI almost wallows in the elements used in his works; conceals his feelings and thoughts behind his masks and figures, enters into more and more complicated communication without making his works crammed or vague. Someone who dares to do this must have sure professional competence and talent to use the necessary means in an independent and delicate way in order to express a genuine individual message. Imre SZILÁGYI does have this competence and talent and also his own judgement, human-ethical attitude to depict these inner conditions. His multi-plated lino-cuts, black and white and coloured linotypes, copperplates, crayon and pen-and-ink drawings all testify his artistic disposition; the posters, bookwrappers, invitation cards, memorial leaves, emblems, bookplates created by him reflect his versatility, fully developed technical skill and delicate creating power. The inventiveness, the flight of his imagination radiating from his drawings and cuts, the way how he visualizes (without using stereotypes) the thoughts hiding behind a given topic. Recurring motifs of his works are the elements of the objective world and nature, the stylized shapes of different living beings like round-backed cats, owls, dogs who populate his realistic and at the same time talelike world together with scarecrows, puppets and pixies. He draws old houses, plank gates, fences, towers, roofs and gables as a background. First of all the figures in his pictures: the clowns, comedians and enchanters prove that this is an independently individual world. His created situations are tales of today. Hiding behind his motifs and stories Imre SZILÁGYI himself makes confession and forms his judgement about the world. The elements of the objective and conscious world are fit and included into his works as naturally as birds, trees, animals speak in tales. And still in all these peculiar compositions he intends to speak about people: about their beauty, tender love, goodness, humanity, justness and also about the freakish, wicked, ugly, the inhuman, about the mental meanness of hypocrites. His peculiar way of looking at things needed an individual form of expression behind which the human world can be felt. His inclination to caricature certain phenomena, his ludicrious grotesque play are dissolved in his continually deepening sprightliness. More and more often does he use gentle irony and humour. He seems to be wiser and tries to interprete human life in its entire richness—from the lyric beauty to its comic and grotesque sides as well. Imre SZILÁGYI’s approach is never from the outside. We can always feel his sympathy for vulnerable people—however curved the mirror seems that he holds to them. His copperprints exhibited in the recent years show that his techniques developed together with the widening of topics and the perfection of his visual and creating methods. Seeing the delicate lines of his engraving, we are more and more convinced that sure draughtsmanship, an ability to see the essence is combined with the joy of forming and taking pleasure in the details. The way leading from the early drawings, black and white and coloured lino-types to his copperplates displays an inner ripening process, the enrichment of his taste and picture-forming. While in the coloured linotypes we often find homogenous, single drawings counterpointed with 3
