Post-War Figurative Art
(1949-1989)
Signature
Signed on the reverse: Ganzaugh Miklós elm.v.o. 26x30 cm Didergő király 1979
His unusual life path began after his high school graduation, when he failed to get into the College of Fine Arts. In order to have an " decent " profession, he enrolled in a higher agricultural technical school, where he passed his state examination in 1966. But he could not give up his artistic ambitions. Initially, he was a decorator, title painter, window dresser and exhibition designer, and from 1972 he also got close to art through his profession: first he worked as a wood engraver in Sárospatak, and in 1974 he became chief restorer at the Hungarian National Gallery.
One of Ganczaugh's methods is compression, which is characteristic of both his paintings and graphic works. He liked to blur genre boundaries and mix different techniques. Ancient motifs, symbols and biblical themes are common in his work. One of his critics wrote that Ganczaugh 'does not abstract the spectacle, but starts from elements of reality that are already transformed for him in order to approach different levels of motifs with human implications'. His paintings show the possibilities of expressing oneself through non-figurative motifs and signs, in such a way as to express clearly discernible feelings and emotions behind the apparently confused yet rational order of abstract forms. Ganczaugh is constantly experimenting with the dissolution of the boundaries of space, and therefore usually opens up at least one "side" of the (closed) composition and extends it in imagination. In The Shuddering King (1979), the frame is erased or even composed into the picture in such a way that it is not considered a border and is painted in. His artistic intention is that the reduction or elimination of formal enclosure is a powerful way of helping to represent phenomena in a more general way. The work can be read both as an icon and as a reference to Ganczaugh's civic occupation, as the thick, fragmented layers of paint stacked on top of each other resemble the palette of a restorer.