Ilona Keserü belongs to the Iparterv generation of Neo-avant-garde artists, who made their debut in the 1960s. In the middle of the same decade, she turned away from traditional painting, and started to explore imageries and materials that relied on individual invention, much in line with developments in international art. Powerful gestures and loud colours characterized the new paintings she presented in 1967 at the Budapest Technical University’s club. Painting No. 10 (1966) is also part of this gestural series, Numbered Paintings. Each piece in the series has the same, whitish-greyish ground. The gestures, hatched lines and circles do not fill the picture space, and allow instead the black and the strong colours that stand out against the ground to come into their own. There is oil pastel hatched over the colour oil paint. Industrial paint was used for the greyish white base and the black details, as something that is more resistant to washing and rubbing. The same ideas were also to inform non-series works, like Red Painting (1966).
Krisztina Üveges
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