Janos Soltész

Janos Soltész (* 1952 in Jászberény ; † 2012 in Berlin ) was a German-Hungarian painter.

life and work

Janos Soltész was born in 1952 in Jászberény , 75 km east of Budapest . He moved to Steinheim am Albuch ( Stuttgart district ) in 1965. After finishing primary school, Janos Soltész trained as a galvanizer in Heidenheim an der Brenz before moving to Berlin , where he began painting. His first surviving drawings date from the end of the 1960s and from the 1970s onwards, alongside influences from Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, they quickly show their first free works. Even before he began studying at the Berlin University of the Arts , he created independent works of printmaking. From 1976, Soltész studied at the HdK, where he completed the master class with Dietmar Lemcke in 1982. In addition to expanding his graphic work, he mainly worked with the watercolor and pastel techniques .

While the watercolor work mostly revolves around the themes of nature and landscape (later study stays in Italy, France and Spain made a significant contribution), the preoccupation with the depth of color of the pastel brought to light early major works that also expressed Soltész's deep intellectuality. In addition to personal dream experiences, it is above all complex social violence / states of fear that are translated into rather simple, surreal imagery. Since z. B. the contrast between a whitish raised egg and its threatening shadow to suggest the fear of nothing. The helplessness of keys stuck in the iron next to the locks they are supposed to open is also masterfully expressed here.

In general, it is striking in Soltész's work how sensitively the artist reacted to the respective medium and material. So already his early drawing oil works by the contrast representational / abstract from. The repertoire of shapes and colors increased over the years, but the fundamental balancing act between the two views persisted throughout. The characteristic of Janos Soltész's oil work is his skillfully handled spatula technique, with which parts of the individual layers of paint are scratched or scored again. From this emerge the forms and signs, as he himself occasionally put it. Therefore, both distance and close-up views of the paintings are fascinating.

In the last years of his life Janos Soltész gradually withdrew - screaming was never his thing in pictures - from public life and the art market in order to devote himself only to perfecting his pictures. In 2012, he died of a heart attack at the age of 60. Soltész was buried in the New Twelve Apostles Cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg .

A short time later the Janos Soltesz Archive was founded, which saved the painter's estate and began to record and preserve the artistic work. In addition to around 5,000 works on paper, there are 400 oil works on cardboard and around 300 oil canvases. The systematic development of the inventory sold through sales is also planned and will be supported by photos that Janos Soltesz took of his works.

Important exhibitions

personal data
SURNAME	Soltész, Janos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-Hungarian painter
DATE OF BIRTH	1952
PLACE OF BIRTH	Jászberény
DATE OF DEATH	2012
Place of death	Berlin