ApafiguraFather FigurePéter Sudár

Perhaps it could be said that it is particularly towards the nineteenth century; towards the turn of the century, where we see the contact and transition of two great eras: the 19th and the 20th centuries. The last chord of the historical ages and modernism. This interest runs through my paintings, they are born out of this interest. If you look a little closer at the pictures themselves: you can see that they are old-fashioned pictures. Even if we can recognize and identify all the elements and objects that surround us. A jacket, a Nike, a loudspeaker, a car.

In short, I'm interested in whether we can look at our time and the people in it as if the glamour of the great ages could be ours. Can we borrow dignity, nobility, grandeur from the past. The concept of the father figure used in the exhibition, apart from being primarily the figure of my father, immortalised and sung about, also refers as a stylistic layer to the father-fatherly patterns that I have found in the paintings of Diego Velázquez, Gyula Benczúr, Ilya Repin or Károly Ferenczy. They are painterly father figures whose brushstrokes, colours and artistic attitudes inform my own painterly choices.

Péter Sudár