Artportal.hu

(1940., Kassa –)

After his parents died during the deportation, he was moved to his grandmother to Sátoraljaújhely, but at the age of 5, after his grandmother’s death, he suddenly found himself in an orphanage. The adopting family forced him to beg on the streets instead of studying in school. He was a bricklayer, worked in a fireplace- and steel factory, for the water and canal-building company, and in a mine, too.

In 1992, after 35 years of work, he became unemployed. He has enjoyed on drawing, and strarted painting in 1975. After he got married for the second time, he moved to Salgótarján, where they charged him of imitating János, Balázs, who lived near him. So he burned all his pictures having painted in Pécskődomb, and started a new era. (only one oil painting remained.)

His art is rather irregular. He only illustrates the night in his pictures with tiny little paint dots, which became a symbolic composition with monumental effects. He has been inspired by his bitter childhood memories. He emphasizes poverty and secularization by monotonously repeating the stylistic parts and figures. He attended a lot of collective exhibitions in the past decades: the Kassák Club in 1978, the Komáromi Kisgaléria in 1980, Mátraverebély in 1983, at the Vituki Gallery in 1986, then in Szolnok, Ózd, Salgótarján, Nagykanizsa and Budapest. He presented his pictures at the Roma Fine Artist’s National Exhibition for all the three times.

His first debut outside the country was at the papas tapas centre in Vienna in 1988, then he showed his paintings together with his wife, Jolán Oláh at the Hungarian Institute in Paris in 1992. He also had a lot of single exhibitions all over the country. For many times at the Balázs János Gallery and in 2001 he had an oeuvre exhibition.

Works in Public Collections

• Ethnographical Museum

• Roma Parliament’s Collection

• Gypsy House's Collection.