Walking in the suburbs (1966)

Árpád Darvas studied at the College of Applied Arts for two years, then in 1947 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, where his masters were György Konecsni and Sándor Ék. He worked in almost every field of graphic design, designing posters, emblems, exhibition graphics, logos, coats of arms and book illustrations. His main clients were Mokép, Hungarhotels, the Pannónia Hotel and catering companies. In the 1960s, his posters were characterised by a stark, flat, symbolic language and restrained colours, which gave way to a modelling style of drawing that emphasised the use of graphite and depicted satirical scenes and figures. He was a member of the Papp Group and participated in all their exhibitions between 1963 and 1982. Since 1983 he has been involved in the work of the Békéscsaba Graphic Artists' Association.

In several interviews, Darvas has said that graphic designers in Hungary were in a privileged position from the 1960s onwards: on the one hand, because they were given greater freedom ideologically, they were freer to experiment in the direction of abstraction, op art or even pop art; on the other hand, because they earned more than the average intellectual. The sixties and seventies were the last golden age of unique film and advertising posters in Hungary, in which Darvas played a major role. He was one of the first to use overexposed, "burnt photos" on posters, and in the 1960s, along with György Kemény, he is associated with the appearance of Hungarian pop art film posters on the streets. He later moved towards surrealism and then began painting again in the early 1980s. 

From the late fifties, Darvas made several collages on paper, similar to his work A walk in the suburbs, which explored the themes of the big city and alienation. One of the defining problems of our time, it has preoccupied artists from existentialist writers (e.g. Sartre, Camus) to modern or new wave film (e.g. Antonioni, Godard, Bergman). In Darvas' collages, huge buildings, steel structures, electric wires, vehicles, people who sometimes look like machines themselves, wander alone among them. Darvas is able to convey a sense of anxiety with quite simple means. The objects and figures are cut out of paper, while the spatial positions and structures are illustrated with the lines of the strokes, and the paint gives the work an atmosphere that is quite otherworldly.