László Fehér

László Fehér

1971-1976 Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Art in Budapest under Lajos Szentiványi and Ignác Kokas.

His art was honored with several awards, among them the Munkácsy Mihály and Kossuth Prize. In 2007 he was the Ambassador of Hungarian Culture.

„László Fehér's paintings have a subtly stark innocence. Again and again one sees the same care image, as though witnessed by an inner eye - a vision slowly brought into focus as it emerges from the unconscious: transparent, almost invisible figures - often only one, a child - reduced to their contours, and alone in a fiat void, usually black and gray, that is, colorless, but sometimes, ironically, bright yellow, as though the deserted scene was bathed in the light of a sun that would never set. The image is grim, yet it is also oddly comical: the figures are ghosts in a barren land- scape - an ironic Elysian field - but do ordinary things in an innocent way. They play with toys (Junge mit Luftballon and Kreisel, both 1991), float on rubber mattresses (Auf dem Wass er, 1990), have a swim (Im Wasser, 1990), embrace on a bridge (Paar, 1991), have a smoke in private (Der Raucher II, 1991), walk in a park (Steinvase, 1990), and feed the bird that swims in its lake (Swan, 1994). They are altogether relaxed and unself- conscious. Little good their innocence does them: it is threatened by their bleak environment. They may be unaware of it, but it holds them in its deadly grip."

(In: Donald Kuspit: LÁSZLÓ FEHÉR: MEMORY AND ABANDONMENT)