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KAZOVSZKIJ, EL
KAZOVSZKIJ, EL
Painter
(Leningrad, 13th July, 1950 - Budapest, 21th July, 2008)
1970 – 1977: Hungarian College of Fine Arts, Painting Faculty; masters: György Kádár, Ignác Kokas. 1980-1983: Derkovics Scholarship; 1982: Scholarship of the Smohay Foundation; Award of the International Triennial of Stage Design; 1986: Prize at the 3rd Hungarian National Drawing Biennial, in Salgotarján; 1988: Prize at the 4th Hungarian National Drawing Biennial, Salgotarján; 1989: Munkácsy Award; 1989: First Prize at the 17th Spring Open Exhibition held in Salgotarján; 1990: 12th National Aquarelle Biennial, Separate Award of the Cultural and Public Educations Ministry, Eger; 2002: Kossuth Award. Besides painting Kazovszkij also deals with the preparation of installations, performances and stage designs. He resides in Budapest. Kazovszkij’s artistic career began around the end of the 1970’s. His art is characterized by a mythological mentality. His installations and performances are the metaphors of the birth and death of myths. He organizes his characteristic artistic world, made up of permanent motifs around poetical images from ancient Greek and other origins. His life and the mythological universe are strongly intertwined and dependent of one another. Images of his differing from each other in genre are formed and defined by one and the same world, and constitute variations of his individual mythology. There are no isolated periods, themes and the scope of motifs hardly change with the passing of time. His compositions are built based on an attentively constructed and defined iconographic system. Kazovszkij prepares comic-like series from symbolic base themes: a figure sitting with a fixed and nervous gaze, Venus, the Fates, scythes amongst mountains, Cyprus trees and memorials, or within the purgatory holding similar symbolic meaning. Despite the often, theatrical settings, the images do not portray scenes, but depict the relationships between his figures, stylized to a mythic extent. The expressiveness of his forms is provided bold vertical special positioning, the strong structuring of his compositions, his definitive contours, and the intensive contrasts provided definitive and intensified colors. Kazovszkij made use of the tools of dramatic compression during his work conducted in the less defined structures of his installations, therefore his mode of portrayal also became much more direct. Ropes cross the spaces, thus holding together and at once decorating the numerous participants of the plays. He began his performance series entitled Dzsan-panoptikum at the end of the 1970’s. He interconnected theatrical space, movement, texts and music with traditional painting and sculpturing perspectives. He surrounds the motionless or active living bodies with architectural and sculpturing elements. The central themes of the Dzsan-panoptikum are the approach of unapproachable beauty and objectification: the conflict between impersonal and personal, between subject and object. Kazovszkij’s art is defined by the artistic ideals of ancient Greek mythology, which is embodied most in his tragic view of destiny and fate.
(translated by: Vladimir Végh)