Our second exhibition at the Liszt Institute London is a group show featuring the paintings of 17 contemporary Hungarian artists, also known as the Érd Collective. Here you'll find more information about who these artists are and their oeuvre.
Cross-Section is on until 30 July - visit us between 2.00-6.00 pm Monday-Thursday or 11.00 am-3.00 pm Friday.
János Aknay (1949) is a painter and sculptor awarded both the prestigious Kossuth and Munkácsy Prize and the title of ’Artist of the Nation’ in Hungary. He is one of the outstanding personalities of post-geometric creators, who both expands and narrows space with his pure colours.
József Baksai (1957) is a painter and graphic artist, awarded the Munkácsy Prize. He mainly works with oil paint, but also creates mixed-tech graphics, drawings, illustrations, and installations. Anselm Kiefer, George Baselitz, and Francis Bacon had a great influence on him during his studies.
József Csetneki (1966) is the founder of ART ÉRT Art Foundation in Sárospatak, Hungary, and ART ÉRT Art School. He has been a member of the National Association of Hungarian Artists since 2001, the ’Patak’ Group since 2005, and the Society of Hungarian Painters since 2023. In addition to his creative practice, his artistic and pedagogical activities are also worth mentioning. He is the organiser and professional manager of several professional art sites. and a participant in many national and international solo and group exhibitions.
Emil Eőry (1939-2024) was a sculptor whose sculptural work was accompanied by a series of paintings with a varied approach and restrained colours. He was a member of the National Association of Hungarian Artists, the Association of Fine and Applied Arts, and the Hungarian Sculpture Society. He was a participant in various art camps and a founding member of the X-art Association and the Érd Collective. His works can be found in public spaces, public collections, and private collections at home and abroad. In his paintings, he achieved the depiction of philosophical thoughts with hard, pure colours and shapes.
László Felugossy (1947) is a painter, performer, actor, director, writer, and screenwriter, awarded with the Munkácsy Prize. His creative practice is closely intertwined with poetry and music. His rich oeuvre cannot be divided into distinct periods. In his style, the direct object cult of pop art is often mixed with the expressive symbolism of graffiti, building a unique universe. He aims to point to the latent power of objects, opening associations in new depths.
Maja Hudák (1983) decided to pursue a career in fine arts after early classical music studies. After writing and performing in theatre, she has been regularly participating in exhibitions since 2007. In addition to painting, she also makes installations and experimental short films. She is a founding member of the Érd Collective. She has been a member of the National Association of Hungarian Artists since 2010. For Maja Hudák, there is only one space: the complex labyrinth of her own soul, crisscrossed with threads and ribbons.
Kata Jánosi is a Barcsay-prize-winning painter. Her solo exhibitions took place in Budapest and Szekszárd, Hungary, while group shows included Ningbo (China), Milan, and Abu Dhabi. In her art, as the artist claims, the central core is more internal, spiritual processes; she likes to call her works internal landscapes, even hiding behind the title Plant Studies, which can be seen at Cross-Section.
Enikő Kalocsai (1967) is a painter and graphic artist, and a member of the Hungarian National Arts Council, Budapest, since 1998. Her practice often focuses on nature, natural phenomena, and the observation of the world around us. She loves to play and experiment with reflections, with lights, shadows, and layers of air projected on each other in different spaces and environments.
Manfred Karsch (1948) was born in Erfurt, Germany. Here, he met his wife of Hungarian origins, with whom they have been living in Érd, Hungary, since 1972. He is not only a painter, but a graphic artist as well. In 2007, he was awarded the Érd Artistic Prize, and in 2009, he was one of the founding members of the Érd Collective. He continues his creative practice even during his retirement. He builds the composition layer by layer using a meticulous, splashing technique.
Mihály Kéri's (1949) surfaces, enclosed in the pure geometry of right angles, bring to mind an unbreakable laconicism. He founded X-art Association in 1992, and the Érd Collective in 2009. His works have been exhibited in Budapest, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland. His works are in the collections of Budapest’s Ervin Szabó Library, the Contemporary Artistic Collection in Dunaharaszti, Hungary, and Spira Performing Arts Centre in Jönköping, Sweden.
Johanna Kovács (1951) is a painter and graphic artist who has been awarded the Derkovits Art Scholarship, the Studio Prize, the Scholarship of Salzburg, and the Graphic Award of the journal Week in Bucharest. She currently works as an art teacher in Budapest. Many of her works can be found in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery. Johanna Kovács moves from the concrete to the more abstract in her artistic career. She started out as a graphic artist, and, in recent years, she has been creating what she calls ’flat plastic images’. Texture and spatiality play an important role in these. At other times, she balances on the border between graphics and painting.
Szilvia Ponyiczki (1973) is a Hungarian-born artist living and working in Grantham, UK. She worked as an architect for 10 years, and after moving to Great Britain, obtained a degree in Fine Arts at Trent University in Nottingham in 2020. She has been a member of the New Art Exchange Orbit Group in Nottingham since 2018. The main aspect of her work is the exploration of the personal and the collective unconscious through art. She is fascinated by the common threads that run through cultures and histories, revealing our shared humanity.
Ferenc Puha (1951) is a painter whose oeuvre is divided into clearly separable sections. He delves into a subject thoroughly, and then concludes it before raising new painterly problems. He has been a member of the National Association of Hungarian Artists since 1995 and is a founding member of the Érd Collective. His works can be seen in the Contemporary Collection at Dunaharaszti, Hungary, and at Ferenczy Museum in Szentendre, Hungary.
Fritz Rautner was born in 1951 in Judenburg, Austria. He's been creating paintings, graphics, and sculptures since 1970. He has been exhibiting his works since 1981, at both solo and group exhibitions in Hungary and abroad. He is a member of the National Association of Hungarian Artists and joined the Érd Collective in 2011. In his pictures, filled with depressing demons and dark angels, he practices calligraphic brush writing. He is the author, the sender, and the recipient of his ‘letters’. Therefore, he does not seek legibility and only imitates the cursive handwriting.
Ágnes Sz. Varga (1959-2024) is a Munkácsy Prize-winning painter and graphic artist. She was a founding member of the Érd Collective. Her works are in the collections of Dráva Museum in Barcs, Hungary, and the Rákóczi Museum in Sárospatak, Hungary. She worked with an infinitely simplified visual world, as she paired black and white, dark and light, silvery, gleaming grey, and fog-white surfaces. The existence of light and the associated cosmic struggle of darkness acted as her main themes.
Zoltán Székács (1954) is a painter. His earlier practice included experimenting with ceramics, and he has been painting since 1990. Materiality and plastic processing of the surface dominate in his works; the figurative and abstract elements are mixed in his pictures. Scratches carved on surfaces reminiscent of plaster carry a specific message, quoting the totemistic colour and form world of ancient cultures. He refers to his own paintings as lyrical abstracts.
Péter Wrobel (1955) is a painter, one of the founding members of the Érd Collective. His works carry philosophical meaning, and sometimes they are permeated by a peculiar, harsh sense of humour. Sometimes it makes an impact on the audience by putting everyday objects in a surprising context. An important feature of his works is his attraction to the open work, in which the viewer also plays an active role. According to the artist, once when he was a child, he breathed on a window and thought to himself: now this is what art is! He's been interested in everything that's invisible ever since. His oeuvre is an intellectual kaleidoscope, a mind-expanding indoor world adventure with colourful objects found and created.