Napfényben gyantacsöpp. Szűcs Árpád festészete (Gyulai katalógusok 9. Gyula, 2000)
Summary T he art of Árpád Szűcs is an island with a character on the map of Hungarian art. His art is unique because it cannot be tied to any trendy style, and it is characteristic because it is the alloy of the pure values of several sources of art history and the unique perception of the world and emotional charge of the artist. His art is also very special because the artist has never committed himself to any groups or defensive or offensive alliances except for one aborted attempt. His art is also unmistakable because the artist has created his own world of concept and expression that is recognisable and credible at first sight. The artist's life so far has been the life with ups and downs typical for a Hungarian intellectual in the 20 th century. Árpád Szűcs was born in the Hungarian Highlands in 1933 as a son of a Calvinist pastor. The fact that he belonged to the Calvinist Church and also that he had to leave his home area stigmatised his life as a young man. After several hardships in life he graduated from the Calvinist secondary school in Pápa. Since he was not cordially welcomed at any higher educational institutions in Hungary at that time, he worked as a technical draughtsman, he was a member of a brigade during the construction of Stalin Town, later he ended up at the Teacher Training College in Szeged. This was a real island in the world of Socialist Naturalism in the frosty 1950s. At the college he met two persons of great importance. One of them was László Vinkler, a highly talented and educated artist and educator with European level of knowledge, who provided him with the foundation of spiritual commitment and artistic character. The other person was Margit Kováts, who, at that time, worked at the college as a teaching assistant, and who later became his wife. László Vinkler launched his artistic career, he also opened his first exhibition, and Margit Kováts was his fellow artist, closest companion, best friend, wife and the mother of their two children. They lived together for four decades. In the 1950s and 1960s Szeged was not exactly the most welcoming place for fine arts. Socialist Naturalism washed out soul and spirit, and also the artificial enforcement of the Vásárhely School tied the hands of young artists who were educated in art history and who made hard efforts in order to gain as much knowledge as possible about contemporary art. Is it any wonder that the exhibition of the Spiral Group formulated by László Vinkler, István Lehel, Margit Kováts and Mihály Veres in 1971 was torpedoed by the officials, only the design of the poster advertising the exhibition was made? It was impossible to deviate from the bed of Procrustes of the offcial trend. Árpád Szűcs looked for new ways of artistic expression in the 1960s. He was first attracted by the spiritual surrealism of the beginning of the century, he felt that the world of Klee, Miro and Dali was close to his own, but he also felt attraction and love towards the art of some masters in early Renaissance, Botticelli, Giotto and Piero de la Francesca. He made no secret of the fact that he was also attracted by the pointillists of the avant-garde masters, that he was excited by the trembling lights, the forms made out of points, the dissolving contours, the clear structure behind the cloud of ideas. He arranged universal human problems like love, friendship, struggle, defencelessness, purity, the ontological continuity of mankind and many more around motives surrounding his own self with the help of architectural phenomena in Szeged, like the Votive Church, stairs, the museum, the bridge, the embankment of the river, the town hall and the River Tisza. In this way he has applied local elements to serve his universal message. Blue and brown have been the two most dominant colours in his works since the beginning of his career. Blue represents the sky that is shining above us; brown is the colour of the fertile soil. The purity of the world of Apollo and the temptation of the Dionysian world. Sometimes these colours confront each other; sometimes they express peaceful harmony. The artist's artistic synthesis unifies the crystal-clear, logical arrangement, the excitingly vibrating surface created by the artist's own invention, the technique that applies a painter's knife, the honest, masculine poetry, the colours scattered in space and the mature discipline of Cubism, the playfulness of musical tunes and the eternity of the frozen moment. As he expresses it with deep authenticity in one of his exhibition catalogues: "The expression of the problems of our existence that has thousands of roots postulates the utilisation of tools that man has acquired so far. Selecting the ones that suit my personality I am attempting to amalgamate them to be able to provide a worthy form for new contents." 78
