“József Árendás’ spiritual nature and creative disposition are displayed in an indivisible unity on his posters. He is the multifaceted clown in the circus, who often keeps hiding behind his mask and never acts as an individual. He is not really a certain type of person, either. He is a mysterious figure, whose jokes and bantering will not spare human civilisation. He loves to find the visual means of communication to his own delight and entertainment, suited to his spiritual nature and actual mood. He presents the heartfelt and tangible tragicality of the understanding of the turning points of Hungarian national history in a mockingly scornful way. At the same time, he heartily treats himself and his audience to a number of erotic sketches, frivolous humour and scornful one-liners. József Árendás’ lifework also constitutes a professional norm for future generations of poster artists: if one looks at his career, they can be assured that it is not the style of the posters that is in focus but their artistic expression.

During the 50 years of his artistic career István Bakos earned professional recognition primarily in the field of applied graphic design. Many associate his name with the genres of advertisement graphics, poster graphics and design graphics; in other words, with graphics as an art of lines. The first short period of his career extending from the start of his artistic activities until the beginning of the 1970s is predominantly characterised by the imagery of the world of pop art. After establishing his unique perspective and manner of expression, István Bakos created the most acknowledged pieces of his lifework until the mid-1980s: he produced his creations of theatre and cinema posters using surreal images. In the following two decades, moving away from painting, he reached the top of his artistic achievements during that period with the help of photography. The most recent years, however, have promoted him to return to the original perspective of his artistic career. István Bakos dismantles and reduces the visual reception of the thought to be mediated by his art to particles, and then compresses the artistic content into an emblem. The symbols, which surface from his oftentimes-used black and white side-scenes, are drawn using only a few lines, but in a split second these few lines are capable of producing concentrated associations in the beholder. His choice of topics are always personal and are prompted by the moral responsibility he assumes for his wider environment.”

(art historian Márton Keppel)

Organiser: Hungarian Academy of Arts’ Section of Applied Arts and Design