Istvan Sandorfi

Painting never dies

Sandorfi is, without the slightest doubt, one of the most representative European artists of the transition from the mid-20th to the 21st century. Hungarian by birth, an immigrant fleeing the Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956, taking refuge in post-war Germany, and finally settling in Paris until his death, his work is of an almost fearsome personality.
 
With an extremely intransigent personality, basically self-taught, he practiced a very internalised style of painting, in many cases of systematic, almost paranoiac,  self-portraits, but of an indisputable expressive power. He also painted his daughters, Ange and Eve, a lot. It was only in the second half of his career that a milder production emerged, recreated in the bodies of his studio models, wrapped in sheets and blankets, and introducing a palette of colour of a much greater richness.
 
The exhibition that the MEAM in Barcelona is showing in September is of an unprecedented importance. Never before have a total of over 140 large-format works been brought together, in a series that fills the rooms of the Palau Gomis completely. Practically all the work produced by Sandorfi in the first half of his career is present, all of his blue period (for many the most innovative, passionate and charged with expressiveness), much of his pink period and a major part of his final stage.
 
The exhibition is completed, on the third floor, with a reproduction of Sandorfi’s workshop, full of authentic items: his wooden easel, with the posthumous work he left unfinished, his palettes, brushes, colours, the slide machines with the projections of photos that he took of his models, personal photos and even some perches with the kimonos that he always wore to paint in his own workshop.
 
The Foundation of Art and Artists trusts that, with this great exhibition, the world of art once again focuses its attention on an artist who, in the eighties and nineties, exhibited in the main galleries around the world, and later remained in a patient wait that has made him one of the most appreciated artists by experts and other artists, yet less known by the general public; a public that will be amazed and will not be left indifferent due to the clearness, personality and consistency of an unrepeatable author. 

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