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)

"The watercolour is usually described as the most demanding of the painting techniques as it requires the swift, nimble and spontaneous application of colours which, when applied, cannot then be altered or added to because of the speed at which the colours dry on the paper. This technique, however, requires more besides dexterity, indeed it produces a genre, a formal and stylistic world, containing an all pervading artistic sensibility which one could only describe as poesy. This isn't considered a necessary requirement for the medium. It isn't even taught. Rather such poesy is the medium's very own language, its whole being. The way a watercolour expresses such profundity, such emotion, is to oil painting what poetry is to prose. Watercolour has the spirit, rhythm, the noble poignancy of the metaphor one finds in poetry, which are themselves the defining characteristics of the medium. ” (Magdolna Supka)

Evidence supporting such parallels between poetry and the watercolour, their shared subtlety and gentleness, their desire merely to hint and suggest whilst being pregnant with feeling, and their shared interest in their own particular concerns and aesthetic criteria, can certainly be found. And as poetry, breaking away from classical tradition, became an emotional reaction to topics derived from man's existence as a social being, with the soul and intellect continually in a state of flux, so the watercolour medium gradually rejected the formal clarity, the technique and the naturalism of 19th century English watercolour painting.

One of the best ways of gaining an impression of the changes which have been going on within - contemporary Hungarian watercolour painting over recent decades has been to visit the Eger National Watercolour Biennial. This event, which has since its conception been forever undergoing a process of transformation, had by the middle of the 1980s reached a crossroads. Since then the biennial has very gradually been trying to adapt to the new social and economic conditions in order to ensure that the true state of the medium in Hungary is represented. In contrast to the situation in Europe as a whole no survey had been made of the recent history of watercolour painting in Hungary until the Eger Biennial decided to show the works of Hungary's finest Twentieth Century practitioners of the medium. Oenő Elekfy, Géza Bornemissza, Béni Ferenczy, János Vaszary, Endre Domanovszky, István Szőnyi, Jenő Gadányi, Géza Bene, Béla Veszelszky, Imre Ámos, Dezső Korniss). In a further effort

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