Mazányi Judit szerk.: Kandó Gyula (1908–1968). A festőművész hagyatékának bemutatása. (PMMI kiadványai - Kiállítási katalógusok 5. Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, Szentendre, 2003)
are more disciplined and tenser compositions, which involve the possibility of the development of a picture-construction directed only by a visual logic and pushing lyricism into the background. In 1965, in his tempera pictures made in Hungary, the elements kept in plane and painted in intensive colours - which sometimes recall surrealistic motifs - are contrasted with one another decoratively, sometimes with a playful dynamism. On the basis of some of his works, his interest must have turned towards French lyrical abstraction as well. The painting titled Trees around the House can most of all be related to the characteristic features of some of Jean Bazaine and Alfred Manessier's works painted in the 1950s: the cut up patches are arranged on the surface as if they were hardly perceivably intended to refer to a real sight. The question arises whether it was impatient curiosity or an inner inducement to meet the challenges of the various devices created by the isms of the first half of the 20 th century that always led him towards new ways. In his last years, he made two series presented from two starting points. One series continues the way of abstraction. The first pieces of that appeared in 1965, among them Brown Forms on Yellowish Ground, a tempera picture, where the brown figure with thick black contours gives an organic unity with the yellowish background. In the works belonging to this group there are sign-like, graphic forms recalling bare branches, withered and bossy V nes created from thick dark lines and patches and - seemingly accidentally but according to the sketches deliberately - the power of gestures against empty and more and more homogeneous backgrounds: a very lonely, withdrawn man's confessions. In 1967, he went to see his son in America. However, the journey did not help to strengthen his endeavours of that time. His isolation and the lack of feed-back on his art led to an inner uncertainty. It can be discovered on his smaller paintings, sketches of townscape details and his series of Serbian churches related to story-book illustrations, which suggests the intention to fit into the traditions of Szentendre painting. At that time, he was searching among his stylistic elements of his earlier works respecting the unity of view as if he had to start everything from one point, as if non-figurativeness or abstraction had been just a strange adventure in his career and he should set out to find the real character of his painting. But there remained no more time for the new experiment: on the 17 th of August 1968, he died suddenly in Szentendre. Gyula Kandó's whole career and the changes of his artistic approach were accompanied with homelessness. If you take a look at 20 th century Hungarian artists' life you can see that his fate was not exceptional. Among the causes we can discover besides the characteristic features of his personality the contradictory Hungarian history of the past century.
