Agria 39. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2003)

H. Szilasi Ágota: „Súgott képek”

Agota H. Szilasi "Whispering Images" The Art of István В. Nagy István В. Nagy was born in Szilvásvárad in Heves County in 1933. The son of a doctor and a teacher he grew up in an art-loving home in a village short on artistic charm. Drawing, however, opened up a new world to him during his childhood. It was when the artist was about fourteen and fifteen years old and attending school in Sárospatak, that he became acquainted with the paintings of Rembrandt, whose spirituality struck a chord in him; in his own words the encounter "... was a secret realisation, something resembling a minor intervention ". During the fifties István В. Nagy pursued his studies in the somewhat suffocating surroundings of the Hungarian College of Applied Arts, where he studied tapestry at under Noémi Ferenczy, graduating in 1956, and the Hungarian College of Art where he completed his painting degree in 1959, having studied under István Szönyi and Aurél Bernáth. The realisations of his youth failed however to make it through his college years and into adulthood. Like the majority of his contemporaries life became a matter of stepping into line with the trends, requirements and demands of the time, something which marked his painting from the sixties through to the eighties. It was a period in which István В. Nagy produced works of a satirical nature charged with criticism whilst also addressing the formal questions of space, handling and colour, elements which continue to be of importance in his works today. Today he believes, that irrespective of the quality of the pictures and their appeals to social responsibility- something which earned him the Munkácsy prize in 1983 - there was no fundamental truth in that kind of art. It was in the mid-1980s, as he was entering late middle age - that István В. Nagy rediscovered the moral world he inhabited as a fourteen-year-old. From that moment on he wanted to unravel a world which "is much bigger than us, and of a quality and scale at variance to that of which we are part". One could term his most recent works "whispered images" in their ability to distil the truth from the alienation and bitterness of everyday existence in the most understated of ways. The details and elements making up the four great themes one sees in István В. Nagy

's most recent works create a harmony helped by the way his Zsámbék, Picture Gallery, El Greco and Biblical series, are all interrelated. His "El Greco studies" help to temper our feelings of alienation with the hope of salvation, whilst the Biblical series is more intent on attempting to redefine fundamental truths within the context of a series of Biblical subject matters likely to strike a chord in the world in which we live. Colour is particularly important in his work, his refined use and handling of the various blues, yellows and reds being his means of evoking space and light. The broken picture surfaces, the velvet frames, and examination of unfathomable space have been István В. Nagy

's chosen themes for the last twenty years along with the expression of the divine in mankind. His works - to quote Béla Hamvas - "realize spiritual power", "stirring in us the desire for good, and through good, knowledge". It is this which lies at the heart of István В. Nagy's most recent series of paintings. 515