Girl with a Choir (1964)

Albert Kováts attended a free school from 1954, but was arrested in 1956 and served two years in prison. An exhibiting artist from 1961, his early works were iconic, magical images that paid homage to the memory of Lajos Vajda and emphasised his ties to the Hungarian surrealist tradition. In 1967 he had his first solo exhibition at the Fényes Adolf Hall. It was here that he presented his first "ancestral Ubu", influenced by Paul Klee's Senecio. Alfred Jarry's King Übü was to become the central theme of his later art, whose grotesque title character became for him the Dictator puppet, laden with allusions to the Kádár era. 'The Kafkaesque dimension of anxiety and the grin of Dadaism meet in Kováts' Übü paintings', wrote Éva Forgács. In the seventies, he was an illustrator for the Rakéta Regényújság and published a small book entitled A rajz (Drawing). He was already experimenting with collage, but the real impetus came from a Max Ernst exhibition in Paris. Between 1980 and 1985, he mainly made collages, mostly on a black background with white line drawings, and paid particular attention to the joints to create an effect similar to that of the engravings. In addition to his work as a painter, he has been writing and publishing articles on art and urban history since 1991.

The Girl with a Choir was created during Kováts' first artistic period.  The motifs that appear against the dark background - the girl, the thistle and the town - live as symbols in the picture. The thistle is a symbol of sin and suffering: in the images of Mary it represents sin overcome by Christ, while in the Passion it refers to suffering and the crown of thorns. Either way, the city is therefore positioned above the thistle, which can be both a symbol of the "heavenly Jerusalem" and of the earthly sphere. The shapes almost glow in the dark blue space. The simplicity and purity of the single-plane depiction exudes a naïve reverence, and the rigid, strictly static setting brings the painting close to the atmosphere of medieval icons. However, Kováts seeks to expand the plane-like representation (see the spatial representation of the city, the modulated face and body). The Girl with a Choir shows affinities with the paintings of Lajos Vajda and Béla Kondor.