Szilasi Ágota, H.: Víz - fény-szín-tér. Stílusvariációk egy technikára. Egri Országos Akvarell Biennálé 1968-2004 a Dobó István Vármúzeum kortárs akvarell gyűjteménye (Eger, 2006)

does graphics, makes large carpets and installations and puts on performances. Although the abstract emblematic vocabulary he uses in his pictures bears a formal resemblance to the surrealistic world of Joan Miró, it is used to make a humorous commentary on life in contemporary Hungary.

Eger Watercolour Biennial award winner in 2000 and 2002

Imre BUKTA (1952)

Born in Mezőszemere, which is where he currently lives. One of Hungary's most established artists, he is a Munkácsy prize winner, and an Artist of Merit. Since 1975 he has been practising his own brand of agricultural, close-to-nature art, an approach perhaps best compared to arte provera. He uses peasant work instruments and materials in his sculptures, performances and installations, which then take on human characteristics. Within this personal mythology each object becomes a monument celebrating everyday existence. One sees in his works those eastern European incongruities produced when modernisation meets the lives of the peasantry thus presenting the grotesque present with a gentle irony. He also likes to use more traditional media, such as Indian ink and watercolour.

Eger Watercolour Biennial award winner in 1986

Mária CHILF (1966)

Born in Marosvásárhely (Tîrgu Mure§, Romania), she graduated from the Hungarian College of Art in 1995, where she studied under Dóra Maurer. She also attended the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, where she was taught by Katharina Sieverding (1997-98). She has received bursaries to study in Berlin, Bonn, Amsterdam, New York, Stuttgart, Rome. Drawing, watercolour and oil painting, installation and media art have all found a place in her work. Her meticulous, engrossing watercolours have an organic, colourful and cheerful quality. It is difficult to verbalise her works, despite the fact that they appear to be conversation pieces. The surrealistic settings take the form of interior landscapes made up of enlarged biological motifs.

Eger Watercolour Biennial award winner in 2000

Eszter CSURKA (1969)

Born in Budapest, she studied at the Hungarian College of Applied Art (1991- 97) and the College of Theatre and the Cinematic Arts (1997). A Munkácsy prize winner and Artist of Merit, her paintings, graphics, mixed media, collages and other activities contain surreal motifs accompanied by a cinematic mode of vision, not surprising when one considers her training in film direction and camerawork. Her art examines the duality of the trivial and a state of considered detachment, as well as the importance of the picture-making process and the rôle spontaneity plays within it. Made up of blurred, almost abstract forms occupying a peculiar pictorial space made up of strange colours (lilacs, pinks, bilious greens, light tans) she redefines the still-life both in terms of subject matter and mood. The figurative has become more prominent in her work. Her pictures, which are mainly of women, illustrate how, at a time when the human spirit is slipping into a world of profanity, we are becoming alienated from ourselves and our fellow beings. Such images are based on the

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