Ákos Birkás. Works 1975-2006

Ákos Birkás (1941) is one of the emblematic figures of contemporary Hungarian art.
In the 1960s, Birkás was renown for his painted expressive portraits, but from the mid-seventies, he began making conceptual, hyperrealist pictures, before continuing his researches into the relationship between the work and the environment / the work and the observer, by photographic means. He dealt with the picture as both object and role, while producing a series of photo portraits. He began painting in the eighties and in 1985 commenced his series of Heads which also expanded into an epic series. The only motif here was an ellipse occupying a brick base. After painting countless variations on this pared down form, which can have countless other meanings besides the human face, in 2000, Birkás unexpectedly began painting large scale portraits, the photorealistic style of which, their light treatment of colour and manner of painting stood in stark contrast to his earlier abstract pictures. By the same token, the basic questions and principles of Ákos Birkás’s art have remained unchanged through the years: the composition, the structure, the problem in the broader sense of “image architecture,” as well as the universal theme of head and face.
The catalogue of the retrospective exhibition points out new directions in his oeuvre that consistently put his earlier work into a quite new perspective. The book includes a study by the curator, an interview with the artist, plenty of reproductions and a complete bibliography.

Language: Hungarian, English, German