Dóra Maurer

Dóra Maurer is one of the most prominent figures of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde. She created many of the era’s key works across numerous genres (painting, photography, film, etc.). Her educational activity is also significant. In the late 1960s/early 1970s, she predominantly created conceptual photographic works that often examined the linguistic nature of visual meaning. In line with the artistic ideas of the time, these works can either be interpreted as documentations of performances that took place without an audience, or as images that were always meant to be two-dimensional. From the 1970s onwards, Maurer started focusing on painting and pedagogy (and later on, also exhibition design). She worked together with Miklós Erdély, first on the famous Creativity Exercises (1975–1977) and later in the framework of InDiGó Group (1981–1983). As the result of grassroots reform, she began teaching at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1990. She typically creates mathematically defined geometric systems on shaped canvases. Her pictures can be organized systematically; it is as if they were all different visualizations, each with their own perspective, of the same, complex geometric formula.