Biography
El Kazovsky, an artist of Russian origin, is a defining and unique figure in the Hungarian contemporary art space. She completed her secondary school studies at the Miklós Radnóti High School in 1964 and 1968. In 1968, she already came into contact with the No.1 group and exhibited with them several times. Between 1970 and 1977, she graduated from the College of Fine Arts, majoring in painting. Her masters were György Kádár and Ignác Kokas. In 1976, she became a member of the Young Artists' Studio and the Art Fund, and in 1978 of the Association of Professional and Industrial Artists.
The character of her life's work is given by a private mythology she built, a complex world, as well as the processing of her assumed transgenderism (homosexual man born in a female body). Her creative activity began at the end of the seventies and, in addition to painting, also included installation and performance art. Her themes combine the symbols of the Egyptian cult world and elements of classical ancient mythology, with the eternal search for the ideal of ideal beauty. Constant, unfulfilled longing is at the center of her stories, which often take place in backstage locations reminiscent of theater sets. The desired party is present in her artworks in the form of faceless torsos, ballerinas, skirts or even Venuses, while the desiring party (the artistic subject) appears in the artworks in the form of a dog-like wandering animal, creating a connection between the viewer and the image.
After her death, in 2015, the Hungarian National Gallery organized an exhibition of his large-scale oeuvre under the title "The Shadow of El Kazovsky - The Life/Work of El Kazovsky".
