Szilasi Ágota, H.: Országos Akvarell Triennálé. P. Szabó Ernő művészettörténész (1952-2018) emlékére (Eger, 2018)
P. Szabó Ernő: Előszó az 50 éves évfordulóját ünneplő egri akvarell tárlathoz
-U a model of the total human existence in the microworlds of the Tisza river dam. Myth and reality are combined in the works of Gábor Király, who was awarded the Artist Prize of the Ottó Hermann Museum of Miskolc. The prize founded by the Eszterházy Károly University of Eger for young artists was given to Gergő Bánkúti for his works consisting of half a dozen small sheets and titled with noble simplicity as „Watercolours", in which the details and figures of everyday life are interpreted with the young artist's specific sense for irony and the grotesque. And with this we have returned to the young artists who exhibit in Eger in much bigger numbers this year than ever before, and this cannot be explained with existential reasons considering the modest financial background and the limited amount of prizes. There were a lot of young people among the applicants too - altogether 74 - and one third of the exhibitors - altogether 38 - belong to that age group. The fact that 66 of the exhibitors have not participated in one of the earlier 22 biennials-turned-triennials is also unusual, and reflects the renewed interest in the genre and the technique, and also the attractiveness of the event. Many submitted a rather strong portfolio, so much so that 23 artist are present with the maximum three works and there are 65 who submitted more than one work and all of those are exhibited. In light of the above it is clear that even though the statistics seem sometimes a little dry, in fact they tell you a lot. They make it clear that the series of biennials, revamped into triennials, will deserve interest in the following years as well, and on each occasion they give a snappy answer to those who saw watercolour as the entrance to painting or the relic of the past at most. It is true that the structure of our immediate environment and the functions of the individual parts have extensively changed by today: instead of separating and ranking the functions we put the emphasis on the fact that they are equally valuable. As I said, we look for real emphases, the real coordinates of life hoping that one of the youngest exhibitors, Mária Csanálosi, born in 1996, is wrong after all when claiming in the title of her work: „You are only a guest here". No, we feel pretty much at home with the watercolours at present, in Hungary, at the triennial in Eger. And this is a very good thing. Thank you for your attention.
