At the beginning of his career, MEHES joined the surnaturalist group, and later created conceptual works, photographs and actions. Everyday, his work shown at the Second Iparterv Exhibition in 1969, is considered to be the first Hungarian photorealist painting. His series Lukewarm Water, started in 1970, was the starting point for the hyper-realistic paintings based on a postcard from the spa in Hajduszoboszlo – the artist later bought the whole series. The composition of the figures, depicted in a dispassionate and distanced manner, not only recorded a moment in life, but also, in an ironic and melancholic way, the lethargic world of the Kadar era. The double meaning of the title made it “impossible not to interpret the series as a harsh critique of a soft dictatorship”. The series was also a great success with private collectors, which is perhaps why he returned to the subject several times in the 1970s. The work in our collection highlights the left-hand side of the 1973 painting Lukewarm Water III, while also changes the colour scheme: the greyish-black and brownish tones typical of the photographs are replaced by a more subtle and uniform pale blue haze. The work is only apparently unfinished (it is signed by Mehes), but rather deliberately reveals Mehes’ working method of pre-drawing, the way he creates images that are more real than reality. The revelation of the technique indicates that the artist had by then moved away from this form of hyperrealism.