SOMODY, Péter

Veszprém, 1963

Péter Somody is an artist living and working in Pécs. He was Ilona Keserü's student at the Drawing Department of the Janus Pannonius University of Pécs. He studied at the Master School of the University of Pécs and absolved his DLA (Doctor of Liberal Arts) studies in painting at the same institution. His masters were Ilona Keserü and Gyula Konkoly. Between 1997–98, he was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. In 1999, he was selected to participate in the exhibition titled "Junge Kunst" at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. During this period, he showed his work in several group exhibitions in Munich and other locations in Bavaria. He is currently a professor at the Faculty of Arts' Department of Painting, University of Pécs, and the head of the institution's Doctoral School. His works are regularly shown in national and international exhibitions in Munich, Nuremberg and Stuttgart. In 2000, he was awarded the Strabag Artaward. In 2015, he received the Munkácsy Prize for his work. Péter Somody is one of the prominent representatives of contemporary abstract painting. He started developing his distinctive style already in his early period. Transparent stain painting is at the core of his artistic practice until the 2010s. He strives to express lyrical sensuality by relying on a reduced set of tools. The translucent, loosely applied patches of colour occasionally overlap; in other cases, they become independent, cloud-like fields of colour enveloping the pictorial space. These open fields of colour become quasi-spaces, into which infinite geometric garlands and serial forms are introduced, based on the principle of the "Open Work". The collision of sharp and blurred elements gives the surfaces a unique objectivity. The viewer is invited to observe the interplay of visual elements on the surface and the meditative silence that emanates from them.