A discovery,

A great discovery. Too late, but still worthy of a blog.  I discovered this artist on a very depressing day out at The Hepworth Wakefield. I have not been to a Gallery in yonkers ...hence why I have been so slow on the uptake.
 Here Is Gyorgy Gordon. A painter haunted by shadows of his past. He died aged eighty in 2005.

I have just found his obituary. He had plenty of sadness to pour into his painting......1948-1953 he studied at National Academy of fine arts in Budapest. By 1956 the political situation was dangerous for his way of thinking. Then his mother died suddenly( he painted her in the morgue) and his first marriage failed and Russian troops returning to Budapest decided Gyorgy to pack his painting equipment and head to the Austrian boarder with as much as he could carry. His six year old daughter Anna came too.
He had a very traditional liberal art school education, the only child of a solicitor, His youth and early adult years were dominated by Nazi occupation, As he was a committed member of the communist party and an art student, when the Russians invaded they were welcomed until disillusion took over. He and many others fled the country after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.



The it was disasters after more disasters. They finally arrived in the United States and were sent back to Austria, Gyorgy was kept in a police cell in Salzberg for thirty days and lost track of his daughter for another three months.Eventually the Red cross reunited them in London.

Four the next five years he worked in commercial art studios living in bed sits and slumbs. He met another expat Hungarian who was studying piano at The Royal Academy of Music. He married |Marianne Mozes in 1961 and their son Adam was born in 1963.



He accepted a lectureship at Wakefield college of art in 1963 and moved "up north". His paintings were bleak....early works being violent and later becoming muted and monochromatic. " an existentialist hell from which his figures were unable to escape"


Kafka : the Trial.......spring to mind. single figures caught in a half life.....very compelling stuff.

Any way he and his family moved to a converted Smithy in the village of Heath above Wakefield. His work changed at this period and he started to paint portraits.

His final paintings are amongst the most beautiful.

The image I have used here was a photo taken by me at The Hepworth. I asked the attendant if it was okay. So this is my discovery.

Makes our lives look really fabulous .

Right! that is enough about the Wakefield Hepworth Gallery now. Dower.....Not for me and I just have to get over the disappointment. Just as I had to get over my last husband who was "into" all this. It is plain now why I became an alcoholic!