Papp Oszkár gyűjteményes kiállítása (Ernst Múzeum, Budapest, 1986)

Oscar Papp belongs to the generation of artists who began their careers after World War 2 in the hope and with the ambition of molding Hungarian social and cultural life in accordance width socialist ideals. He interrupted his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, just before terminating them in 1950 and worked for 25 years restoring wall paintings, in different parts of the country. He continued to paint in his spare time and thus shifted away from the centralized artistical life, keeping his independence. His last one man show was in 1953, after this he did not show his work to the public for 10 years. His way of painting changed essentially in these ten years. Later he developed the results he had obtained, the shapes, and his views about the cog­nitive function of art going further in the direction he had found in those years. This is also the period when he got better acquainted with present day western painting, appreciating especially Picasso, Klee and Moore. From the group of progressive Hungarian artists he valued Jenő Barcsay and Dezső Korniss most highly. All sorts of new solutions in art interested him, but not for the sake of their novelty. Much rather contemporary artists, within his coun­try and abroad, gave him impulses for systematic analyses he regularity used. He wanted to know, to see, to what extent a modern stylistical tool could help as a means of expression for his visual contents. The same intentions led him also in his studies of natural form, such as crystals, plants and man him­self. He made a great number of very expressive and analytical drawings of humans. Oscar Papp is one of those rare artists for whom creative activity is the material shape taken by a sort of cognitive process, or as he puts it „an absolutely spiritual activity”. He wants to be up to date, but not for its own sake, rather with the intention of show­ing hidden spiritual phenomena in a visible form, easy to understand, with the possibilities offered by new solutions of 20th century art. His art is not abstract, in the usual sense of the word. He claims that his painting, even when it seems to be abstract, is really naturalistic. As he understands it - and his work is a proof of it - the analysis of natural form serves the purpose of throwing a light on its charac­teristic appearance, its structure, the rules gowern­­ing its organization. His paintings and graphic real­izations, made with the use of different techniques, show this spirit. His artistic activity is naturalistic also for the reason that there is a continuous and formal connection between his figurative and „abs­tract” creations, where the latter also suggest the presence of the man, the artist, being frequently statements of his psychical condition. This artist thinks serial thoughts, he paints series of creations. The two largest series of his work are the Metamorphosis and the Heads, painted between 1961 and this day. It is a rather exceptionnal phenomenon, that the curves of cosmogenetic and anthropogenetic development are traced in artistic interpretation by his serial creations. This is also the key to his naturalistic understanding, interrelated in the patterns of this double process, where the first extends from micro-levels (the Frost-flower series of 1963-65) to macro-levels (the Blue vision, 1962, Henoch, 1966). Equivalent to the different levels in space, is mythology on the level of time. First the shape of mythological thought is formulated. Protagonists are anonymous heroes, groups, and scenes („Egregores”, the Small Mythology, 1961), then subjects from Greek mythology are chosen, heroes named, and well known scenes are painted on canvas or on iron plates (Barbarian Mythology, a series of enamel paintings, 1973-1977). Individual creations within the series, as well as the series am­ong themselves, are related to each other by a sort of visual, formal, logic. The artist applies the same sort of systematic analysis to his own work as to the forms encountered in nature and to the tools offered by different styles, and makes use of different solu­tions, in the first line those used by surrealists. The working of this visual logic is most clearly evidenced in the items making up the two huge serial creations. The formal origin of Metamor­phosis (Tao) can be traced back to other series which express meditative states of mind or situations, such as Shapes (1959-1956), Grandchildren with spheri­cal heads (1960-1963), Plants-Crystals (1960), the already mentioned Egregores, and more specially, the group made up of only a few itmes, the anth­ropomorphic Shapes of Roots, composed of plant and crystaline structures (1959). Seen as a whole, Metamorphosis is the unfolding of a metamorphic process and for this reason, its close relationship with music is also evident. In early items (1961) the shape of the tree, or the plant which served as a starting point, is still easy to recognize, then it be­gins to function as a subject, and from then on an ever increasing number of variations of this subject make up the series of metaphoric realizations. In other words, the subject is really a metamorphosis, unfolding in time, in the course of years, but unlike the generally accepted meaning of the word, this metamorphosis always keeps its interconnections with the subject it started from. The parts and pat­terns, into which the metamorphical shape can be subdivided, also belong to the same pattern of thought. We may guess, guided by some of the proclamative items (Athanor, 1961), that the ideatic and formal triggering of a serial creation also bears a close relationship to spiritual alchemy. The other important serial creation, Heads, makes direct contact with Man, the center of spiritual activity. This time the artist extends his analogical, formal analysis to Man, himself as well as others, placed on the level of the spirit and the soul. The formal equivalent of types recognized is again found in the structures, already elaborated for natural shapes, organizational laws, indications of psychical states, expressed as signals, in a network­­system. Many items of Heads transpose anonymus heroes of present days, special types, to the realm of mythology. Noisy fanatics, silent people obsessed with cognition, people who lost their bearings, suf­fering victims, pass in long processions as we watch them. The preference of the artist is really for men of the spirit making efforts to win in all sorts of situations in the different spheres of life, to do the impossible, or simply to find a place for themselves in the maze of antagonistic forces and, even higher soaring, in cosmic spheres (The Son of the Sun, the Inward Infinite, The Head of the Labyrinth, Anal­ogy, the Ikon of the Astronaut, The Revolted). It was rare that the outer envelope - the face - appeared on the heads painted by Oscar Papp. On recent items in his series of heads, however, it is only the interrelationship between spirit and face which interests him. Again he took as a starting point, as analogies, his former series (Crumpled shapes, 1959, rubbed-in enamel colours made in the seven­ties, drawings made to illustrate the „Characters” of Theophrastos 1982). Every item in the group of grotesque, mordant, pictures gives an idea of age and inward deformation, everywhere we see a ca­­leidoscope of wrinkled, torn, shredded elements. Recently the artist passed his sixtieth birthday. In the last forty years his painting unfolded into a unique bulk of creative effort. At every step new features are evident, which amplify each others’ expressivity, which are intertwining and conductive to the conclusion that in this exhibition a work of art is shown which ranges among the most outstanding in present day Hungarian art. Ottó Mezei

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