Endre Tót turned away from painting permanently in 1971. He first published his Unpainted Canvases in a samizdat artist’s book: the pamphlet contained the outlines and dimensions of the paintings. Viewers of the book can fill the empty frames of the works that never existed with their own imaginary images. This typographic work marked a point in the oeuvre where conceptual thought became more important, exploring as it was questions of how images exist and are perceived. This aesthetic of absence was developed further in the series he called Night Visit to the National Gallery, in which reproductions old masters’ works were painted over in a way that completely concealed them, so that they could only be identified with the help of their titles. The work in our collection also develops on the aesthetic of absence. The painting poses further questions: what is left for the artist who relinquishes pictorial representation and ventures into the realm of conceptual art? In a further twist, this painting represents the cover page of a former collection of his prints, which is to say the copy became an original work of art.
Ü. K.
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