Hann Ferenc: Paulovics. Kántor Lajos és Kocsis István írásaival (A PMMI kiadványai. Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága – Ferenczy Múzeum, Szentendre, 2008)

Hann Ferenc - The artist's career: an overview

might seem so to a superficial observer. The realistic features were kept for long, and the scenery was being transmuted very smoothly into pure emotional conveyance. This slow process can be illustrated by the example of Transylvanian Christ (1 992), where Christ's body is covered by strong, passionate brushstrokes; the suffering face and the twisted body are replaced by suffering itself, by mystery, the artist's empathy and identification with Christ's destiny. The painter's conveyance becomes emotional and conceptual, while objective and realistic interpretation disappears. * Portraits make up an important part of the oeuvre. Like the artist's self-portraits, the portraits depicting famous authors from Hungarian and world literature, are more than photographically exact likenesses or easily recognizable illustrations. They belong to the tradition of'psychologizing portraits', existing since the Hellenistic period. As early as in his Partium years, Paulovics, who had a penchant for collage technique, used to put textual fragments and pictorial references as attributes, next to the faces portrayed. In Germany, he continued the rich series of portraits in a similar vein. He portrayed, among others, Sándor Márai, Károly Kós, Kafka, Domokos Szilágyi and Solzhenitsyn, the contemplating Madách and the brooding Gyula Illyés. In the latter case, he did not use textual fragments but an abstract bundle of ideas, surrounding the poet's face just like a halo. By this solution, he made another step towards lyrical abstraction. The painting called The last day of Pé-Gé (1995) is a beginning and an ending at the same time. The title refers to a close friend, Géza Páskándi, a Hungarian writer from Transylvania who created masterpieces in all literary genres. Paulovics heard with deep sorrow the death notice of Páskándi on the radio; he could not or did not want to make any portray of him so he panted the combination of homage and conjuration. Colors argue with each other, and passionate gestures allude to the essential, the inconceivable, the absent, to someone who passed away but will be with us forever in a different form. From a formal aspect, regarding the solution chosen by the painter, this canvas was not unprecedented. There were similar ones, for example, Shooting star, 1993; The message of summer, 1994; Down at Lake Balaton, 1997; Evolution, 1995; Rainstorm, 1995; The Gates series, 1995, etc. The latter works definitely attest to the shift towards lyrical abstraction and gesture painting. It would be easy to find parallels within the work of great European masters like Dubuffet or Härtung, but I do not prefer such comparisons because Paulovics is an integrating artist, who responds sensitively to every move of the artistic world, and integrates whatever touches him. Yet, he withdraws reservedly when the personal touch disappears. That is why he paints works apparently different in attitude, almost in parallel with each other. However, the careful spectator can see that the works recalling