Ophir (1964)

Between 1958 and 1963, he studied textiles at the Hungarian College of Applied Arts, which was more open and modern than the fine arts. This also contributed to the fact that Andrása Orvos, as an active member of the Hungarian avant-garde movements, played a significant role among those who wanted to change and renew Hungarian fine art. In 1969 he and his friends founded the art group N°l. According to the founders, the group was open to anyone who, for one reason or another, had no access to the public. The only criterion for admission was quality work. Although there were no stylistic constraints, there were of course many similarities in their artistic aspirations. András Orvos played an important role as an exhibitor and curator of the Balatonboglár chapel exhibitions, which caused a great stir in the local public life of Balatonboglár between 1970 and 1973. He stopped teaching drawing in 1977 and from 1978 to 1986 he was head of the Moholy Studio in Budapest. After that, he devoted his time exclusively to his creative work in the studio of the Eötvös Street Art House in Vác. From the seventies onwards, a sensuous, tonal, plastic style of representation plays an increasingly important role in his paintings, and flowers become almost his only subject. He is influenced by hyperrealism and pop art.

At the beginning of his career, Orvos painted non-figurative paintings of a decorative nature based on a flat reduction. "I was attracted to the art of Lajos Vajda, Imre Ámos, Géza Bene and Bálint. I knew him personally. I learnt a lot from Barcsay, even though he was never my teacher and we have never met. [...] I owe my structure to Barcsay," he said in an interview. In his early painting Ophir, we can observe the contrast between planar non-figurative elements and plastic spatial forms, a mosaic-like arrangement. Ophir is a biblical site, probably a port, from which King Solomon brought various goods (gold, ivory, peacocks, spices, sandalwood, precious stones and monkeys) every three years.