MÁRTA JAKOBOVITS: JUST SILENCE

Solo exhibition by ceramic artist Márta Jakobovits, in collaboration with Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery.

Date: 2 May - 30 May

Time: 13:00

Venue: Liszt Institute London
17-19 Cockspur St, London SW1Y 5BL

Liszt Institute London is proud to present Just Silence, a solo exhibition by ceramic artist Márta Jakobovits, in collaboration with Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery. The exhibition will be open to the public between 2-30 May, Monday through Thursday, 2-6pm, and Fridays, 11am-3pm.

2025 marks an exciting year for the Liszt Institute London, as we open our renewed gallery space to the wider public. Here, you’ll find a wide range of temporary exhibitions showcasing contemporary visual art and exploring historical, literary, or musical themes.

Our first exhibition, titled Just Silence, presents a comprehensive survey of the work of Márta Jakobovits, offering a rare opportunity to engage with both her celebrated ceramic practice and a broader spectrum of her multidisciplinary oeuvre. Through an expansive selection of works, the exhibition foregrounds Jakobovits’s lifelong exploration of materiality, form, and spiritual inquiry.

At the heart of Just Silence lies a conceptual framework centered on silence—not merely as the absence of sound, but as a meditative, existential state. The artist interrogates silence in its many dimensions: spiritual silence and contemplation, and the atmospheric stillness among clouds. The exhibition ponders the ineffable quiet embedded in the act of living itself. These themes are manifested through a nuanced interplay of surfaces, textures, and sculptural volumes, articulated across various media.

The artist explains, '[My work is] a personal approach to trying to make the invisible of the conscious and subconscious psyche visible through [my chosen] materials. This is an ongoing process; it is very important to me. This is my life. Making shapes, families of shapes, putting them in a relationship with natural materials, such as sand, pebbles, leaves, different plants, barks, and shells, or even bringing them back as a reverence for nature. [It is] an intuitive dialogue between me and what is outside of me.'

The exhibition encourages viewers to engage in contemplative looking, fostering a space where belief in the miraculous, the improbable, and the dualities within the human condition can be quietly held in balance. Just Silence positions Jakobovits’s practice within a broader philosophical and metaphysical discourse, inviting us to believe - in the incredible, in the miraculous nature of life, in the delicate balance of light and dark within us all. Often taking inspiration from the natural world, here, Jakobovits’ works resonate with a kind of inner music, one that asks nothing more than stillness, presence, and the willingness to listen.

About the Artist

Márta Jakobovits (born 1944, Satu Mare county, Romania) lives and works in Oradea, Romania. Her practice is founded on researched and developed explorations of ceramic techniques. Jakobovits’ complex oeuvre encompasses casting, modelling, firing, and glazing. The artist works with shape, colour, and texture, building a vast, detailed personal library of how her use of chemicals informs the physical result.

In 1971, Jakobovits graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Cluj, Romania. In 2006, Jakobovits earned a Doctorate in Liberal Arts from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary. Since the early 1990s, Jakobovits has been the recipient of various awards and esteemed recognitions, including the Fine Arts Award by the Union of Artists from Romania, in 2007; the Ferenczy Noémi Award from the Ministry of the Cultural Heritage and Human Resources, from Hungary, in 2011; the Hungarian Knight's Cross of Merit, presented by the President of the Republic of Hungary, in 2013; and the Life Achievement Award, Romania, in 2024. She is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA).

Having lived under a repressive communist dictatorship, the Jakobovits family, whose heritage is a mix of Armenian and Hungarian, lived on the border between Hungary and Romania, in the town of Oradea. The communists stripped them of their lands and moved them to the old Jewish quarter, hence, a sense of displacement and adaptation to new surroundings was an early influence on Jakobovits’ practice, which became a form of release from the oppressive forces around her. Along with her late husband, the renowned painter and sculptor Miklós Jakobovits, Marta became part of the inner circle of the important Transylvanian artists who were vigilantly creating art as an act of resistance against the regime, which did not allow for such freedoms.

Currently, Marta Jakobovits is a member of several international professional organisations, including The International Academy of Ceramics, Geneva, Switzerland. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, symposiums, and biennales worldwide. Furthermore, several publications have documented Jakobovits’ career and showcased her artistic contributions. Márta Jakobovits: Part of the Road Travelled was published alongside her retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, Romania, in 2022.

Artwork credits:

-Marta Jakobovits, Part of the Road Travelled (detail), 2002 – ongoing. 33 pieces. Stoneware, personal glazes, firing at 1280°C, reduction after firing at 1040°C, sand, bark, stones. Various dimensions, overall dimensions: 13 x 422 x 60 cm. Photograph: Richard Ivey. Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, London.

-Marta Jakobovits, Spiritual Islands i, 2025 (arrangement). Handmade ceramics and found objects from nature, 160 x 60 x 32 cm. Photograph: Richard Ivey. Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, London.

-Marta Jakobovits, Collecting the Raindrops (detail), 2021. 23 pieces. Stoneware, personal glazes, fired at 1280°C, dry leaves and water. Various dimensions, overall dimensions: 9 x 287 x 56 cm. Photograph: Richard Ivey. Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, London.

-Marta Jakobovits, Spiritual Islands v, 2025 (arrangement). Handmade ceramics and found objects from nature, 100 x 45 x 32 cm. Photograph: Richard Ivey. Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, London.

-Installation view of Look and See, Elizabeth Xi Bauer, London, 2022. Photograph: Richard Ivey. Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, London.