Index – Culture – The Artist of the Nation has been put to rest

Tamás Konok’s career began in Hungary, then he lived in France for fifty years, where he became known internationally. He left us on November 20.

Line patterns and rectangles

He painted geometric abstracts from the 1970s, not simply abandoning figuration, but transcending it. His departure from the representation of nature and form turned out to be not only an aesthetic decision, but also a choice of intellectual and moral value. The transitions of light and shadow no longer occupied me, they no longer “stained” me. His metaphysical affirmation of order and acceptance of strong contrasts simultaneously sent him a message

Discontinuous changes coexist in his works with the desire for a coveted harmony. His emotional creations throb so much with this deeply human duality, despite the clean lines, and this sets him apart from the avalanche of soulless cliffs of minimalist genre painting.

In Konok’s images, the tension of the meeting and intersection points dissolves in the edited order. For him, the framework not only interrupts or closes, but also interprets and evaluates at the same time. At the same time, according to the metaset of his art, linearity is simply the product of the human mind. In an interview last year, he put it this way:

The line does not exist in the world, only we can imagine it. Because we consider the meeting of darkness and light as a line. In fact, the most abstract. However, everything can be represented by a line.

The fragility of its characteristic fine lines was counteracted by the confident strength of the compositional structure as a whole. In his last creative era, for example, the unshakable stability of the pyramid shape often anchored his spatial poetry, articulated in increasingly vivid colors and required philosophy of life:

He painted metaphors for life, scanning the railings of a finite human adventure.

As long as the canvas and time allow.

Tamás Konok lived 90 years.

(Cover image: Isza Ferenc / Index)