Two large-scale paintings by Judit Reigl are on loan from the collection realised by the Central Bank of Hungary at the Kunsthalle’s exhibition of her oeuvre. The first time the two works are on display in Hungary institute, in the show that runs until 28th of January. The MNB Arts and Culture aims to make the collection visible and accessible for the general public and will therefore ensure an even wider exposure through art loans in parallel with its own exhibitions. On 16th of November, Kinga Hamvai, Head of MNB Arts and Culture, gave a guided tour of the retrospective exhibition, which honours seven decades of artistic practice, presenting the work of Judit Reigl and highlighting the two paintings.
The two paintings, The Art of the Fugue (Unfolding), made in 1975 and 1976, are from the artist’s longest creative period, entitled Unfolding, which ran from 1973 to 1985. In this series, Judit Reigl’s interest turned away from picturing the human figure and towards the meditative aspect of the spatial and temporal dimension of the painterly gesture. On a canvas hung from above, while listening to music, she applied resin-based enamel paint to one side, which seeped through and left a trace on both sides, then formed monochrome or colour-field areas with acrylic paint on the front of the canvas. After the drying process, she cut and stretched her works. Music and painting met through the artist’s movements, using a rhythmic walk and continuous strokes to evoke the delicate visual effects on the painting. The final compositions were formed through the chemistry of chemicals meeting on painted surfaces on both sides.
