The representational pictorial style of Géza Görgey is based on a thorough knowledge of the “old masters” – primarily the technical questions addressed in 17th century Dutch painting. He builds his own personal visual world on this, a world which is somewhat wry and not lacking in overtones of self-reflexive irony. He either scatters his works onto the canvases quickly, with great passion, in swift, wide brushstrokes, or he works out the seemingly unimportant details with minute precision. As to which side of his painting he decides to show, this stems from the inner directives that determine the various, shifting periods: if we consider his research on the techniques of painting and his camera obscura experiments, it is the latter form; if we recall his passionate, argumentative-polemical side, we find an explanation for the former.

The changes that have taken place in the world around him and in his lifestyle have left a mark on this works: as ministers of the Reformed Church, he and his wife moved to Pálfa in Tolna County. The landscape, the meadows, the yard and the animals in it appeared in his pictures.

The titled of the exhibition in Óbuda calls attention to how the experiences that befall the painter are transformed into pictures not in nature, outdoors, but rather inside his studio: as the results of visual memories and the formal forces that shape the paintings.

Görgey takes his painterly task seriously, however bizarre the subject of his selection may seem: portraits of pigs or donkeys are simultaneously unbiased and empathetic. His “commitment” to and his distance from his subjects are concurrently present in his works, just as one can also discern in them the self-consciousness of painting and the confirmation and self-criticism of the painter’s position.

Gábor Andrási