Page 10 - Attila Konnyu

GÁBOR PATAKI
ATTILA KONNYU’S PICTURES
...At this point one must take an important factor into consideration: the relation between the time of the birth of the pictures and art history. Because however justi ed it may be (and permissible) to revitalise an old style, one cannot step twice into the same river, and it is also obvious that the artist cannot ignore the fact that decades have passed between since his predecessors did their work. He must react to those works and to the critical reception they received. We are talking therefore about inspirations and in uences, about the space between a mode of creation and the process of learning to be an artist. For example, Konnyu acquired some techniques, like the “all over” effect, from Jackson Pollock, the use of radical slashing forms that crash into the surface, from Clyfford Still, and, if we go back further in time, the bizarre possibilities of melting, softening forms from Oscar Dominguez. The inspiration of Zao-Wou-Ki, who belonged to the second abstract wave of the Ecole de Paris, can be found in the poetic exploitation of coloured surfaces that crash into each other, and in the preference for the organic motive.
Though Attila Konnyu does not mention it, to me Wols’s (Wolfgang Schulze’s) in uence is obvious. (He was a Parisian German artist of tragic mentality and fate.) His compositions, with their central knots of pain, which are burn like re, can be interpreted either as owers or as vulvas, until the lines nally erupt outwards and collapse. Certainly, I know that Konnyu does not always paint scratched or burst wounds, the way his German predecessor did. Neither his approach is as dramatic, but, looking at the compositional similarities, what one can observe in some places is a passion and a sincerity which is common to both. There are also striking similarities with the works of Jean Fautrier, Otages, the
great French representative of this movement. These examples underpin my view that the role of informel is most important among representatives of abstract expressionism.
Gerhard Richter’s works, to which Konnyu refers several times, raise other problems. No doubt, in Richter’s abstract series, mainly in his cycles from the 1980s and 1990s, the artist’s vivid colours, the manipulation of the layered stripes of poured colours layer, the brushwork effects and the gestures were important sources of inspiration for him. At the same time, there are fundamental differences, in the method used for applying paint to the surface, in the use of rubber role, as described by Endre T. Rozsa. Nor can we ignore the fact that in the German artist’s consciously multicoloured oeuvre the series of abstract works consist of only one layer, even if this is not the most signi cant difference. The most crucial difference is that whilst Richter consciously refers back to the repertoire of methods used by the New York School and by informel, Konnyu reaches the same destination by an instinctive, unconscious route.
The fundamental question is this: beyond the outer forms of abstract expressionism, to what extent did Konnyu take on the creative attitudes of the genre, and to what extent has he reshaped this attitudes for the current era? Which of these components is stronger? Is his a heroic, activist attitude, an existential commitment, or does he have lyrical, meditative approach that shades into transcendental experience?
Perhaps the crucial point is that Attila Konnyu does not commit himself unambiguously to any method. He makes some use of the
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