Artportal.hu

KŐ, Pál Sculptor (Perespuszta, 2nd June 1941 - )  1963-1968: College of fine Arts, Budapest; master: József Somogyi. 1969 and 1971: KISZ Grand Award; 1975: Munkácsy Award; 1976: 1st prize of the 5th National Small Sculpture Biennial of Pécs; 1982: Diploma of the Kodály Society; 1984: Award of the Art Endowment; 1986: Meritorious Artist; 1989: the Grand Award of the Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition of Salgotarján; 1990: Achievement Award for Hungarian Art; Chairman member of the Berzsenyi Society; member of the Arts Manufacture of Veszprém. He has been the president curator of the Géza Samu Foundation since 1992; 1993-1996: the president of the Council of the Hungarian Global Society of Fine and Applied Arts; Kő has been the honorary citizen of Nagypalád since 1944, and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts since 1995. Kő traveled on study tours to Poland, Transylvania, Italy, Greece, and Mongolia. He has been a lecturer of the Hungarian College of Fine Arts in Budapest since 1978, and the docent of the Sculpturing Faculty since 1990; he has been a university teacher since 1991. From 1992 onwards, for an entire cycle, he was also the vice-rector of the university. 1998: Imperturbably-Diploma; 2001: Kossuth Award. Kő lives in Budapest. The period of his career, characterized by palatable, sensitive, at times grotesque surrealist sculptures, began in 1968. As if his figures had stepped out of the strange stories brought from a childhood spent in the countryside, the never existent residents of nonexistent country. Figures and motifs such as a woman with a black time-clock from ebony wood, woman, with a huge fairy-tale bird of pear wood, Táltos /Magic Steed/ flying above a village of walnut wood, the bride – old lady pair of the Ünnep /Celebration/, from polished alder wood with copper marquetry. The later work became a public sculpture produced from snow-white stone, with blue glass crustification, of pagan beauty, in 1974. Even his early works contain joyful, pop-art-like ideas: Krisztus-arcú /Christ faced/, he painted a red vest onto his Utcaseprő /Street sweeper/ made of lime-tree, He dressed his walnut wood Kossuth in braided felt, with a feathered felt hat on his head, which was how the figure became the slightly grotesque fairy-tale like “Kossuth Papa”. During the period of the heroic Lenin sculptures he carved his own Lenin with his head tucked under his shoulder, in a painted wooden top, as if the mean Lenin-puppet of Chagall, standing on one hand, had jumped to his feet. He placed the small sized pear wood portrait sculpture of the Roma Painter János Balázs, entitled Szárnykészítő /Wing Craftsman/ into a realistic “Object Trouvée” bird cage, with organic, nonfigurative forms placed above his head, composed of colored bird bones. His work entitled Anyám Könyvei /Books of my Mother/ is a unique art-book-object placed on an authentic Thonett Table, tilted slightly, consisting of finely worked book sculptures. Within his habitat Kő was a traditionalist artist who moved freely within time and history: he painted his wooden sculptures, as did the ancient Egyptian masters, he at times carved his sculptures as did the alter carvers of the middle ages, then in other cases as the shepherds of the past, but he also worked as a widely studied sculpturing doctorate. Being a studied sculptor, he makes use of single gestures from the styles of the 20th Century, without truly becoming the follower of any of the specific styles. Kő transferred his unique handcraft surrealism, in 1976, into his first large scale public work, the wooden grave markers, decorated with large painted bone and metallic marquetries, entitled Történelmi Emlékhely /Historic Memorial/, in Mohács. The series is a unique manifestation in the memorial sculpturing of Hungary to this day. The work entitled Magyar Messiás /The Hungarian Messiah / produced for the Ady-tender in 1977, the pearled feathered miracle bird, whose wings broke into the yellow copper net, the huge colorful relief work of the never existent álom Budapest /Dream Budapest/ of Krudy, at the Fórum Hotel in Budapest, and the fairy-boy, riding the two meter tall magical steed at the Bank House of Vienna, were continuations of his carved, marquetted surrealist works. A parallel tendency of his oeuvre was the series of public statues prepared of stone and bronze, depicting kings, saints, and heroes. Kő, in a country where the majority of the statues depicting kings were displaced, the majority of the tomb memorials broken and shattered, and heroic images destroyed, from the 1980’s onwards consciously searched for places where he could restore the symbols and figures that guarded Hungary. The work entitled Szondi György kőszarkofágja /Stone Sarcophagus of György Szondi/ in Drégelypalánki, with the portrait of a knight in armor above it, recalls the tomb memorials of the 16th and 17th Centuries. He prepared the works entitled Géza fejedelem /Prince Géza/ and stone relief of Veszprém entitled István Király /King Steven/, as well as stone relief works of the three saints who also acted in Hungary, at the Hungarian Chapel of the Vatican, in the spirit of the disappeared sculpturing of middle age Hungary. Of his king statues the column statue of fairytale figure of Róbert Károly, with its handcraft qualities, the dense bronze embroideries, the modeling of the sword, the crown, and the regalia, which are in their quality equal to a fine goldsmith’s work, is an outstanding piece. As is the Béla III. the bronze figure, placed as if it were walking among its viewers, located in Baja. Kő may be categorized as a postmodern sculptor of the second half of the 20th Century, simultaneously being the pursuer of the multi century Hungarian handcraft tradition.