The annual competition for the STRABAG Painting Prize has been announced for the eighth time, this year with entries of outstanding quality received from sixty-two artists.
Grand Prize Winner Dorottya SZABÓ (1975) is exhibiting startlingly mature works manifesting her distinct sense of form and a consistent individualized visual vocabulary. Her paintings are a blend of dramatic tension and intimacy. In her competition entries organic elements are linked to the central face motif, or the portrait. The thematic concern of her works is self-quest, the processing of psychological experiences, within an intimate and closed world.
Four artists received Grant Awards.
Attila ADORJÁN (1968) employs art historical references in his Hyperrealist paintings evoking the still life of mature Baroque art. His works provide a personal reading of a great movement within the history of European painting.
The central motif in the paintings of Zsuzsa MOIZER (1979) is based on self-definition. While her earlier aquarelle and oil series were mainly concerned with subjects related to women, her recent series of self-portraits, sidestepping personalized features, raise universal existential questions.
Nóra SOÓS (1979) has expanded the repertoire of her earlier works by embracing the human figure alongside the banal objects of a private environment. She employs the garish, colourful, somewhat frivolous and youthful vocabulary of contemporary international art to a great effect.
Dezsô SZABÓ (1967) experimented with techniques of painting such as the interaction of different lacquer types – drying, shrinking, or discolouring – yielding characteristic surfaces in his sensuous, spectacular and aesthetic monochrome paintings.
With its nearly one decade of history, the STRABAG Painting Prize has attested to the viability of the initiative, in that it has managed to mobilise the Hungarian art public and draw the attention of a young generation of artists to the permanent renewal of the art form. Owing to the regular presentation of the award winning artworks at the Ludwig Múzeum in Budapest, the general public was introduced to the new endeavours of contemporary Hungarian painting.
As a result of a consistently professional selection, a number of lesser-known talented artists were provided the opportunity to start artistic careers, who in turn have corroborated the jury’s choice through their subsequent artistic activities. The Award Winners of the 2005 STRABAG Painting Prize represent various aspects of Hungarian painting, demonstrating its diversity and high quality.
