I warmly welcome you all to the exhibition hall of Zámbó Műterem and Gallery in Csopak. It makes me so happy, that this opening can take place at such place, where the artworks themselves could be seen, because it’s difficult to talk about something the audience can’t actually see and they can only view it after.

The Exhibition of Anita Püspök called Echoes. When Anita first showed us the artwork, we talked about what inspires her, what kind of method is she using, what’s important to her when she’s working, and a lot of different aspect came to me instantly how we can approach her paintings.

One of them – perhaps the artist’s most important one – the music, the sounds. Anita originally wanted to be a musician. She plays piano and cymbalo, and she often paints to music. After our conversation I browsed through her website where I found several videos, where after a Tibetan singing bowl therapy she starts painting, and she draws her inspiration out of music.
What is the imprint of the music on pictures? For example rythm, depth, the layers of music shows up in the layers of paint. The method how she uses the brush, how the paint dances on the canvas symbolises the inner journey. The composition is a methaphor for the journey itself, the progress of traveling from a place to another.

These sound reflections are, both to us and the pictures, the title of the exhibition: Echoes. More than one paintings has been made with this technique, these pictures has titles in a specific musical theme like Cosmic Sounds, Pulse. In The Cosmic Sounds’s case, it’s dense okker yellow and dark brown spots on a deep blue base, where white stripes crosses the purpleish transparent surface, it’s dynamic, energetic, and gives the sweeping feeling of music and rythm.

The joy of making art is visible in every picture. Watching her work in those videos on her website, really worth it. She lays the canvas with a foil on the floor, then she squats next to it, walks around it. It’s approachable on every angle, she can pour, drip, lubricate paint all over it. Then she uses painting brushes, tools and even her fingers.

In the 1940’s and 50’s America, the pioneer of this genre was Jackson Pollock, who is now considered as an actionpainter. He was one of the first, who imagined the canvas as an arena. As Harold Rosenberg wrote: “What happened on the canvas was not a picture anymore, it was a happening.” Pollock studied the Native American sand paintings and he was interested in the Jungian psychology. Interesting that Anita also likes to use sand, minerals in her works, which she collected from beaches, on her summer vacations before that. It makes the canvas kind of a collection surface, where the different materials could stay just like the feelings they mediates. The most important idea of gesturepainting – which is closest to Anita’s work – to show how the painting was made. The emphasis is in progress: what happened with the inner self at the process of making this artwork? “The picture is like an energy pile, where the colours and shapes crosses each other and intertwine.” The power in Anita’s works is perceptible, how the colours, shapes, different materials was used and how she put them on canvas.

We can feel the dynamic in the pictures, which has been obviously strenghtened by the mentioned music effect. Anita’s personality connects with this spirit, she is an always moving, always working, never stopping person. She told me she always liked Monet, which is not accidental, because for impressionists, catching random feelings, thoughts, the impression, was the most important and not the standing model or scene. The colors, the light, the love of nature are important for Anita too, the last especially, because nature and music Anita’s biggest inspirations. Of course we can’t think of concrete landscapes, it’s more like an inner picture which recalls the land.
The art in today’s exhibition is really close to lyrical abstraction, which in some way started by the late impressionist artists, and dissolved the stiffness of elements and patterns. This method is the balance of colours and decorative rythm. These are the characteristics of Anita Püspök’s art.

I wish you an enlightening dive in these musical paintings, and while you’re at it, have your own inner journey, which is essential to take in art in general. Let this music be your inspiration for this medditative experience, and I’m honored to open this exhibition.

Szonja Dohnál
Art Director and Art Historian of Veszprém Art House