Ilka Gedő

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Ilka Gedő (around 1960)

Ilka Gedő (born May 26, 1921 in Budapest ; † June 19, 1985 there ) was an important representative of Hungarian graphic art and painting. By 1949, when she temporarily ended her artistic career, she created a very extensive graphic work, which includes various series of drawings ("Self-portraits", "Whole Factory", "Table Series"). She was interested in questions of art philosophy and art history and made translations of Goethe's color theory. After a break of a decade and a half, she continued her career in 1964. In 1969/1970 she spent a year in Paris. In the two creative periods 152 paintings and a very large number of drawings were created.

Life

The family

Ilka Gedő was born to Simon Gedő and Elsa Weisskopf. Gedő grew up in a family where she was given the opportunity to become an educated and sensitive artist. Her father was a high school teacher for Hungarian literature and the German language, her mother an office worker with unfulfilled literary ambitions.

The early years until 1939

Gedő attended the Új Iskola (New School), an institution founded by Ms. László Domokos, née Emma Löllbach, who adopted the reform efforts of the new pedagogy , such as group work and project-based teaching. Gedő began drawing alone as a small child without a teacher and was an experienced graphic artist in her youth. From early childhood on, she recorded her experiences in drawings, almost like a diary. The number of her children's and youth works is around 2000 drawings.

Children's drawing, 1934, Ilka Gedő estate
Children's drawing, 1934, Ilka Gedő estate

The sketchbooks have been almost completely preserved and are provided with the date and subject in their handwriting.

From the time of children's drawings to my Abitur, that is, until I grew up, I drew incessantly. Memories from the past: The girl is 10 years old and is walking around the strange village with the sketchbook during the summer holidays in Tyrol, looking for motifs. She is 11 years old and works dead serious on the shores of Lake Balaton. She is 13, 14, 15 years old and draws the people playing in Városmajor chess and the old women sitting on the benches with the greatest concentration and the determined anger of an ascetic, so that everything looks exactly like this. In the chaos of the Saturday market, she tries the impossible: to capture a rapidly disappearing gesture. She blushes with anger when people look into her notebook, yet she overcomes the shame and disgust of being looked up.

Reading the memories, it turns out that for Gedő, drawing was both an activity that she loved and an escape from childhood.

Youth (1939–1945)

After graduating from high school, Gedő wanted to go to Paris , but the Second World War broke out. Due to the Hungarian Jewish laws, she is not able to attend the art academy. Gedő received lessons in Tibor Gallé's drawing school and between 1942 and 1944 also attended István Örkényi-Strasser's free school.

The sheets from around 1939/1940 already bear witness to a pronounced feeling for painting and an increasingly secure technique. The series of her drawings can be arranged chronologically, and so one encounters a visual diary. She continued this diary during the months of terror that she spent in the ghetto.

During the Second World War, Gedő was sent to the Budapest ghetto in the summer of 1944 . In summer 1944 Gedő moved into the with yellow Jewish star provided house in the Erzsébet krt 26. This house, lived in the Gedő until January 18, 1945, was located in the immediate vicinity of the future ghetto. Initially, this building was part of the emergency hospital at Wesselényi Miklós utca 44, which later served as a shelter for orphans or abandoned children. These children appear on the ghetto drawings.

Four self-portraits were also made in the ghetto. In 1944 the artist was only 23 years old, but one of the self-portraits in the Yad Vashem Art Museum looks at a person whose age cannot be defined or who seems to have aged. The eyes testify to the brokenness that has already taken place, the line running down from the arch of the pressed lips, however, shows that she still has the strength to fight for her life.

Self-portrait from the Budapest Ghetto, 1944, Yad Vashem

"This self-portrait, one of the artist's earliest, is characterized by its blurry shape, in which identity is, as it were, obliterated. Ilka Gedő, although only 23 years old, portrayed herself here as an old woman. The shadowy face, the gloomy Eyes and sagging shoulders tell of fatigue and dejection. In her self-portraits made after the war, the artist continued this expressive style, which depicts a painful introspection. "

Self-portrait in the ghetto, 1944, 10th portfolio: 31st picture, Ilka Gedő estate

On another drawing (folder 10: 31st picture) an old woman also looks up, leaning on the table with her elbow, while her head rests on her hand and her gaze is directed towards the viewer. The right eye looks at us, while the gaze of the other eye initially seems to get lost in the distance, but ultimately also looks at the viewer.

The period from 1945 to 1949

In autumn 1945 Gedő enrolled at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts . Gedő left the academy after six months, presumably, as mentioned in a Hungarian exhibition catalog, for family reasons. It is not known exactly what these reasons could have been, but it was most likely the artist's marriage because their marriage got off to an extremely tumultuous start.

Self-Portrait in Pregnancy, 1947, Hungarian National Gallery

During this period, too, Gedő took part in art life with her works. Their son Dániel was born in 1947 and their second son Dávid was born in 1953. The young mother was increasingly concerned about the complications of her marriage and family life. As her diary from 1949 testifies, she was confronted with the question of whether a woman could even deal with art and whether artistic activity on the one hand and family and raising children on the other could be reconciled. She writes about the irreconcilable contrast between the bourgeois way of life and art, which affects an artist much more than an artist:

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a talented painter. (She is the exception that proves the rule.) She died at the age of thirty after giving birth to her child. She did very well. She left a beautiful work. With a very cool scientific approach, what is the reason that in the Middle Ages the monks painted and the nuns not? Why don't we find a single female name in all of Chinese and Japanese painting?
Self-portrait series / self-portraits (1945–1949)
Self-Portrait, 1949, Hungarian National Gallery

The series of self-portraits from the time in Fillér utca have a strong impact due to their cruel sincerity and authentic artistic power. For the artist who draws or paints portraits, there is no more cooperative model than his own self-portrait, the image that looks at him from the mirror. The portrait of the artist that appears in the mirror is always available. But, as Sabine Melchoir-Bonnet writes: "one must try to seduce the mirror, because if we fail to do that, the malicious second self of the self-contemplating person suddenly emerges from it, the grimacing devil, the shocking projection of the inner one Demons. The task of looking at oneself is mainly that of women who, at a certain period in the development of culture, build their selves under the gaze of another person. Although civilization has already given women outside the paradigm of beauty-seduction- Love also offers fulfillment, the mirror remains the preferred and fragile place of femininity. The mirror is a judgment that knows no mercy: it calls its owner over to him every morning so that the woman can take stock of her charm until it is said that she is no longer the most beautiful woman: "

The artist who draws the self-portrait sits in front of the mirror, she poses, even if she has to bend over to the canvas or sheet of paper while drawing. The draftsman of the self-portrait is both an artist and a model, she is the creator and the created, but also the observer and critic. The artist does not only represent the visual image. She cannot help but reflect something of her personality, because it is she who really knows the person hidden behind the eyes.

Drawings in the Ganz factory and the table series
Female figure on factory floor, 1947–1948, The British Museum

In 1947 and 1948 Gedő was given permission to carry out studies in the Ganz-Werke factory, which was very close to her apartment on Margit körút. In the late 1940s, an engineer organized an educational program at the factory, and so the artist got permission to draw there. The series created here does not represent the glorification of industrial work and the worker demanded by socialism. The friends of Gedős suspected the factory theme from the start, and many thought the artist had adapted to the party line, although for Gedő the factory was only her hunger for models and topics stilled. The subject of another, very interesting series are two Thonet tables.

The years of creative silence (1949–1964)

Although the artist stopped drawing at the end of 1949 - and held on to her decision so much that she was not even willing to play with her children to draw - her interest in art did not die out and she began to study art history and art theory whose notebooks have been preserved in the extensive handwritten estate. All notebooks are dated: in September 1949, for example, she read Gino Severini's theoretical work on painting. She liked to go back to the original sources: She studied the two-volume work Artists' Letters on Art published by Hermann Uhde-Bernays in detail .

Gedő translated very long sections from Goethe's On Theory of Colors , and while she provided the texts with thorough notes and comments, she not only interpreted them, but reconstructed them with the help of the copied illustrations and the parallel color samples painted on glass. Her translation encompasses almost the entire didactic part, and she devoted particular attention to the sixth section ( sensual and moral effect of color ).

The second creative period (1965–1985)

The paintings of the second creative period were created using a two-stage method: In the first stage of the creative process, a small drawing inspired by the moment was made, which can also be understood as an image of a sudden thought. This was the starting point of the painting, as the enlarged copy of this drawing was applied to the canvas with the help of a grid. Gedő worked on several paintings in parallel, and that was probably also the reason that she recorded the creation process of the paintings in diaries (workbooks), which contain all the questions related to the composition of the respective painting.

The process of creating a painting was a long game of chess that often lasted for years. Step by step, Gedő noted down her thoughts and speculations, which repeatedly dealt with the interaction of the colors, with the balance and the juxtaposition of the warm and cold colors. She used very thin brushes to paint, and the workbooks that tracked the creation of the paintings proved extremely useful, as they enabled Gedő to frequently set aside an emerging picture to dry. If the artist then continued working on the painting, she was able to reconstruct the chess game-like creation process.

Artificial flower series

Gedő made series of her paintings on specific themes or motifs. When analyzing the series of artificial flowers, the art historian Júlia Szabó notes: “Similar to the great painters of the 19th century, Gedő devoted great attention to painting and composition in Far East Asia. (...) When Gedő resumed her work, she approached the landscape with the approach of the artists of Far East Asia: The plants do not just appear as ornamental motifs or patches of color, but are beings full of life, the pictures, on the other hand, do not reflect living nature, only theirs Essence or appearance. That is the reason why Gedő called her series of oil paintings from the sixties and seventies an artificial flower series. "

Rose garden series
Jardin des Plantes, Paris, 1980, oil on paper, 57.5 × 46 cm

The viewer of the painting Jardin des Plantes (album / color plate: 122) stands overwhelmed in front of the picture. He has entered a landscape of incredible beauty. The bluish-white field on the lower part of the picture seems optically closer, while it appears that the yellow field above is further away and the whitish-yellow field appears even further. These latter two fields are criss-crossed by flower and plant tendrils.

Self-portraits based on self-portrait drawings from 1947 and 1948
Self-portrait with hat, 1985, oil on paper laid down on canvas, 60 × 48.5 cm

The painting Self-Portrait with Hat (album / color plate: 150) from 1985 was made using an ink drawing. The slightly tilted head, the gaze that is almost lost in the distance, create the impression that one is looking at a photo pasted into an album. The lines that appear on the canvas, swirling in black and following the original drawing, express sadness and longing for death. The head tilted gently to one side also conveys a premonition of death and resignation.

The well-known Hungarian art historian, László Beke, rated this art in 1980 in his letter to Ilka Gedő: "I think it is completely pointless to draw parallels between your art and the 'contemporary' trends, because your art would have been between 1860 and 2000 It draws its inspiration not from the 'outside' but from the 'inside', and its coherence and authenticity derive from the relationship that this art has with its creator - and that cannot possibly get the attention of every viewer of it Works miss. " The letter is preserved in the artist's handwritten estate.

Chronological overview

  • 1921 : Ilka Gedő was born in Budapest on May 26th.
  • 1939–42 : Thanks to family connections, she receives lessons from Victor Erdei.
  • 1942–43 : She draws in István Örkényi-Strasser's private school.
  • 1944 : A large series of drawings is made in the Budapest ghetto.
  • 1945 : She draws for the former Bauhaus member Gyula Pap .
  • 1946 : Marries the biochemist, Endre Bíró .
  • 1949 : Ended her artistic career in the period from 1949–1965.
  • 1950 : From 1950 she did not take part in art life for a long time. She is interested in art-philosophical and art-historical questions and translates Goethe's color theory.
  • 1965 : resumption of artistic activity.
  • 1969–1970 : She spends a year in Paris.
  • 1974 : Admission to the state association of visual artists.
  • 1985 : Gedő dies on June 19th in Budapest. In October, Gedős will have a solo exhibition in Glasgow on the occasion of the Hungarian Cultural Weeks. Gedő's art is recognized in articles in the British press (Glasgow Herald, The Scotsman, Financial Times, The Times, Daily Telegraph, The Observer, The Guardian).
  • 1998 : In 1998, 15 drawings became the property of the British Museum's collection of prints and drawings and six drawings became the property of the Israel Museum .
  • Ten drawings by Gedő become the property of the Düsseldorf Museum Kunstpalast .
  • 2011 : In 2011, 8 drawings by Ilka Gedő became the property of the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin .
  • 2012 : In 2012, 3 drawings by Ilka Gedő became the property of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery , Buffalo, New York, USA
  • 2013 : In 2013, 12 drawings by Ilka Gedő became the property of the graphic collection of the Albertina in Vienna .
  • 2015 : Three drawings by Ilka Gedő become the property of the Metropolitan Museum's collection of modern and contemporary art. In the same year, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston purchased eight self-portrait drawings by the artist.
  • 2016 : The Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig acquired a representative collection of 21 self-portrait drawings by Ilka Gedő.

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions and retrospectives

  • 1965: studio exhibition
  • 1980: Exhibition of the painter Ilka Gedő , Museum of King Saint Stephen, Székesfehérvár, Hungary
  • 1982: Ilka Gedő , chamber exhibition at the Budapest Art Gallery in Dorottya utca
  • 1985: Ilka Gedő (1921-1985) , Szentendre Gallery, Artists' Colony
  • 1985: Ilka Gedő (1921-1985) Retrospective Memorial Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings , Compass Gallery Glasgow
  • 1987: Ilka Gedő (1921-1985) , Budapest, Kunsthalle
  • 1989: The drawings by the painter Ilka Gedő , Szombathely Art Museum, Hungary
  • 1989: Ilka Gedő, Paintings, Pastels, Drawings, 1932-1985 , Third Eye Center, Glasgow
  • 1994: Ilka Gedő (1921-1985) , Janos Gat Gallery, New York
  • 1995: Ilka Gedő (1921-1985) Drawings and Pastels , Shepherd Gallery, New York
  • 2001: Ilka Gedő, the graphic artist, 1948-1949 , Fővárosi Képtár, Kiscelli Múzeum
  • 2003: Ilka Gedő , Raiffeisen Bank Gallery, Budapest
  • 2004-2005: Ilka Gedő (1921-1985) Memorial Exhibition , Hungarian National Gallery
  • 2006: “Weep bitter tears into the dough!” Exhibition by Ilka Gedő (1921-1985) , Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin
  • 2013: Ilka Gedő , the lobby of the Hungarian National Theater

Group exhibitions

  • 1940: Second exhibition by OMIKE , National Cultural Association of the Hungarian Israelites (OMIKE)
  • 1943: Fifth exhibition by OMIKE , National Cultural Association of the Hungarian Israelites (OMIKE)
  • 1942: Freedom and the People , the headquarters of the metalworkers' union
  • 1945: The exhibition of the Society of Artists of the Social Democratic Party and invited artists , Ernst Museum, Budapest
  • 1947: The second national exhibition of the free organization of Hungarian artists , the gallery of the capital
  • 1964: The Group of Socialist Artists 1934-194 4, Hungarian National Gallery
  • 1995: Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey , New York Jewish Museum
  • 1996: From Mednyánszky to Gedő — A Survey of Hungarian Art , Janos Gat Gallery
  • 1995: Victims and Perpetrators (Ilka Gedő's Ghetto Drawings and György Román's Drawings at the War Criminal Trials) , Hungarian Jewish Museum
  • 1996: Victims and Perpetrators (Ilka Gedő's Ghetto Drawings and György Román's Drawings at the War Criminal Trials) , Yad Vashem Art Museum
  • 1997-1998: Diaspora and Art , Jewish Museum, Budapest
  • 1998: The Levendel Collection , the Szentendre Museum
  • 1999: Voices from Here and There (New Acquisitions in the Departments of Prints and Drawings) , Israel Museum
  • 2000: Directions at the Janos Gat Gallery , Fall Season, Janos Gat Galley
  • 2002: Alternative workshop schools of the 20th century , joint exhibition by Lajos Kassák Museum and Vasarely Museum
  • 2003: The Jewish Woman , Jewish Museum, Budapest
  • 2003: Nineteenth Century European Paintings Drawings and Sculpture , Shepherd Gallery, New York
  • 2003: The Right of the Image (Jewish Perspectives in Modern Art) , Museum Bochum
  • 2004: The Forgotten Holocaust , Kunsthalle, Budapest
  • 2005: The Holocaust in Fine Arts in Hungary , Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin
  • 2014: Dada and Surrealism / Rearranged Reality , joint exhibition of the Israel Museum and the Hungarian National Gallery
  • 2016: Art from the Holocaust , German Historical Museum
  • 2019: In the best company - selected new acquisitions by the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett 2009-2019 , Kupferstichkabinett Berlin

Works in public collections

  •        Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest
  •        Hungarian Jewish Museum, Budapest
  •        Museum of King Saint Stephen, Székesfehérvár, Hungary
  •        The Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem
  •        The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
  •        The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings
  •        Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
  •        Jewish Museum (New York City)
  •        Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin
  •         Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, USA
  •        Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA
  •        Albertina Museum, Vienna
  •        The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  •        Duke Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig
  •        The Cleveland Museum of Fine Arts

literature

  • Júlia Szabó (ed.): Gedő Ilka rajzai és festményei (The drawings and paintings of Ilka Gedő) Exhibition catalog. Szent István Király Múzeum, Székesfehérvár 1980, ISBN 963-7131-20-5 .
  • Ibolya Ury (Ed.): Gedő Ilka (Ilka Gedő) exhibition catalog. Dorottya utcai Kiállítóterem, Budapest 1982, ISBN 963-01-4173-6 .
  • András Mucsi (Ed.): Gedő Ilka (1921–1985) festőművész kiállítása (The Exhibition of Ilka Gedő / 1921-1985 /) Exhibition catalog. Művésztelepi Galéria, Szentendre 1985, ISBN 963-01-6605-4 .
  • Katalin Néray (ed.): Gedő Ilka (1921–1985) exhibition catalog. Kunsthalle, Budapest 1987, HU, ISBN 963-7162-86-0 .
  • Zoltán Gálig (Ed.): Gedő Ilka festőművész rajzai a Szombathelyi Képtárban (The drawings of the painter Ilka Gedő in the Szombathely Municipal Gallery) Exhibition catalog. Szombathelyi Képtár, Szombathely 1989, ISBN 963-01-9554-2 .
  • Anita Semjén (Ed.): Áldozatok és gyilkosok / Gedő Ilka gettó-rajzai és Román György háborús bűnösök népbírósági tárgyalásain készält rajzai (Victims and perpetrators / The ghetto drawings of Ilka Gedő and drawings by Ilka Gedő) (Exhibition: Budapest: Jewish Museum, 1995 and Jerusalem, Yad Vashem Art Museum 1996).
  • Péter György, Gábor Pataki, Júlia Szabó u. a .: Gedő Ilka művészete (1921–1985) (The Art of Ilka Gedős / 1921-1985 /) Új Művészet, Budapest 1997, ISBN 963-7792-21-X .
  • Elisabeth Kashey (Ed.): Ilka Gedő (1921–1985) Drawings and Pastels (Ilka Gedő / 1921-1985 / Drawings and Pastels) exhibition catalog. New York 1995, OCLC 313759285 .
  • István Hajdu, Dávid Bíró: Gedő Ilka művészete, oeuvre katalógus és dokumentumok. Gondolat Kiadó, Budapest 2003, ISBN 963-9500-13-5 . [1]
  • István Hajdu, Dávid Bíró: The Art of Ilka Gedő, Oeuvre Catalog and Documents. Gondolat Kiadó, Budapest 2003, ISBN 963-9500-14-3 . [2]
  • Marianna Kolozsváry (Ed.): Gedő Ilka festőművész kiállítása (Exhibition by Ilka Gedő) Exhibition catalog. Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, Budapest 2004, OCLC 315172701 .

Web links

Commons : Ilka Gedő  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Based on a digitized oeuvre catalog, there are more than 3000 drawings by Ilka Gedő in the portfolios, and the number of Juvenilia drawings is around 1700. The number of drawings created between 1944 and 1949 is 740. There are in the public collections there 280 drawings (Hungarian National Gallery: 26; British Museum: 15; Israel Museum: 6; Hungarian Jewish Museum: 12; Jewish Museum of New York: 3; Yad Vashem Art Museum: 144; Berlin; Kupferstichkabinett: 8; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf : 8 Albertina, Vienna, 15, Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH): 10, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 3, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 3, Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig: 21 Cleveland Museum of Art: 3 drawings).
  2. ↑ http://mek.oszk.hu/kiallitas/gedo_ilka/galleries/worksonpaper/publiccoll/5/index_en.php.htm
  3. ↑ Eliad Moreh-Rosenberg, Walter Smerling (Ed.): Art from the Holocaust. Wienand Verlag, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-86832-315-3 , pp. 188-189.
  4. ↑ Sabine Melchoir-Bonnet: The Mirror: A History. Routledge, New York 2001, ISBN 0-415-92448-0 , pp. 271-272.
  5. ^ Júlia Szabó: Ilka Gedő's Paintings (A Retrospective). In: New Hungarian Quarterly. Budapest; Issue 4/1987, p. 189.
  6. ↑ The letter is preserved in the artist's handwritten estate.
  7. ↑ http://www.cca-glasgow.com/archive/ilka-ged-paintings-pastels-drawings-19321985
personal data
SURNAME Gedő, Ilka
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian graphic artist and painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1985
Place of death Budapest