P. Tóth Enikő: Kerti Károly (1917-1986) kiállítása. Kuny Domokosn megyei Múzeum, Tata 2006. október 20 - 2007. február 28. (Tata, 2006)

THE WANDERINGS OF A 20 ,h-CENTURY ARTIST

The Kuny Domokos County Museum commemorates the graphic artist, painter and sculptor Károly Kerti. He was a many-sided artist who played a highly significant role in contemporary Hungarian art and in the 20thcentury cultural and art history of Tata. Károly Kerti's oeuvre has been completed for two decades now; however, his works, produced from the 1940s to the 1980s, are of vivid spirituality, fresh attitude and intense impression. These pieces reflect the personality of an artist who wandered freely among various branches of art, genres and ways of expression; at the same time, they shed flashlight on the events, processes and phenomena of Hungarian art in the second half of the 20th century.

Károly Kerti started his career in his Orosháza period as a painter. His oeuvre became consummate in the field of graphic arts after he settled in Tata (1957), that is, in a flourishing period of Hungarian graphic art when unique values were produced; nonetheless, he created small sculptures and monumental wall and space compositions as well. He rejected stylistic homogeneity and theoretical formalities; due to this attitude, as well as to versatility pertaining to branches, the diversity of genres and the amplitude of techniques, his oeuvre is not be categorised into periods. As the present collection shows, after creating the natureprincipled compositions of the 1940s and 1950s, he started to employ forceful stylisation and to “transcribe” elements of reality and, most of all, human figures, that is, to transform and promote them into pictorial and graphic motifs of rich meaning. This is how his most beautiful works find shape; some of them step into the sphere of abstraction but only to record works graspable by figures, individuals, types, faces, bodies or hands, and display the characteristic features of symbolic, constructive, expressive or surreal composition. His drawings in pencil, ink, crayon and charcoal, his copper engravings, monotypes, lino-cuts and paper-cuts show that he possessed an intimate knowledge in the field of producing non-series compositions and multiplied pages alike, as well as of classical and contemporary graphic techniques; they also point out that from time to time and all of a sudden he returned to painting or, breaking away from planes, he turned to spatially arranged masses and forms. On the

basis of primarily humanistic and heroic motivations, passionate artistic intentions and analysis of devices, Károly Kerti sometimes uses the contrast of black and white, sometimes employs the expressiveness of colours, yet his works are always determined by drawing or “drawing-ness”. His artistic world can be compared to Lajos Szalay's graphic art and Béla Kondor's art interlaced with moral dilemmas; also, it can be distinctly noted that the effects of Pablo Picasso's restless and exciting oeuvre has had impact on the underlying layers of Károly Kerti's works. His art reflects everyday occurrences as well as events of historical importance, references to mythology and folk art, topi of universal and Hungarian culture and art. Nevertheless, as in the case of all impressive artists, theme is but a pretext for Károly Kerti; looking at the glorious or painful events of the past or at the seemingly insignificant things of everyday life, he brings the viewers face to face with themselves and strives to find possible ways of ethical actions of contemporary man, that is, the man of an age when dictatorship turned from communist to socialist, from “tough” to "soft”.

Having given but a hasty analysis of Károly Kerti's works preserved in public and private collections as well as of those in his bequest, we should mention his exceedingly active public life and his activity as an art teacher. As an artist living in the county, he shouldered duties of great significance when representing his fellow artists in national artistic forums; at the same time, he played a role of paramount importance in the artistic life of his smaller homeland, that is, Komárom County and Tata. He worked as a drawing teacher at grammar school and primary school. He was also exceedingly successful as the leader of study circles; presently, a number of his former students are acknowledged representatives of contemporary Hungarian art. His artistic world concept, determined by profound humaneness, is summed up by these variegated forms of activity and by beautiful works of art that breathe in harmony with the reality of the age. This is a concept that we view with sorrowful nostalgia towards a past age.

Tibor Wehner

(1917-1986) KERTI KÁROLY