László Fehér: Capturing Memory

Opening date: 28 September, 2023 6 pm

Q Contemporary presents a selection of recent artworks by László Fehér, who turned seventy this year. László Fehér is one of the most renowned, internationally acclaimed, contemporary painters of the Hungarian art scene. Since the 1970s, his art has been characterised by figurative, photo-based paintings that confront current issues by reflecting on individual and collective memory. His paintings transform seemingly banal, everyday events into timeless metaphors endowed with universal, metaphysical dimensions.

Both consistency and constant renewal characterise László Fehér’s art: the often-times politically charged photorealist works of the 1970s were succeeded in the 1980s by a more expressive approach that continued to reflect on the notion of memory. He created a series of yellow-black, pink and silver paintings in the late 1980s, and then, for an extensive period in the 1990s, he deployed only black, white and grey tones before moving back to warmer shades of pink as the end of the decade advanced. In the latest works, strange, elusive hues replace the pink matter. Often, timeless scenes and uneventful events emerge from the shimmering, greyish background. 

László Fehér is one of the best-known Hungarian artists in the context of the international art scene, representing Hungary at the Venice Biennale in 1990. Large-scale exhibitions were organised from his œuvre at the Ludwig Museum in Vienna in 1997, the Kunsthalle in Budapest in 2001, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest in 2007 and the Modern Museum in Saint-Étienne in 2011. He was the first Eastern European artist to display his work on the Viennese Ringturm façade in 2012. In 2014, his pastel self-portrait received a place in Galleria degli Uffizi’s world-famous self-portrait collection. His works are in multiple private and public collections in Hungary and abroad. He was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 2000.

Curator:  Mónika Zsikla