The Survivor’s Shadow – The life and works of El Kazovsky, Hungarian National Gallery, 6 November 2014 – 14 February 2015
→El Kazovsky: Monument, Várfok Galéria, Budapest, 15 June – 28 July 2018
Hungarian visual artist.
After studying in Budapest, El Kazovszkij began her career in the 1970s, and developed her own mythological world throughout her life. Not only a painter, she also created shows (public performances) and theatre sets. Her life and her universe were both directed by metaphorical reflection, each influencing the other. In her work, themes and motifs are always organised around the same archaic Greek topoi. Her creations are not usually narrative based, even when they seem to be placed within a setting, such as Desert, Sandbox or Small Purgatory, representing Venus, the Fates, cypress trees, mountains and monuments, including her iconographic self-portrait, the dog.
She used strong contours and vivid colours. The figures are often connected by cords that symbolise their interrelations. “At the end of the 1970s she organised a series of plays Dzsan Panopticon in which she mixed traditional aspects of painting and sculpture with movement, text and music with the desire of objectivity and provocation that opposed the personal and impersonal,” wrote Mária Molnár.