Head (1948 körül)

Between 1946-1951 he was a student at the Budapest College of Fine Arts. His masters were Róbert Berény, Géza Főnyi and Jenő Barcsay. He made study trips to France, Italy, Bulgaria and Israel. Since 1964 he has been a member of the old Szentendre Artists' Association. Although he has made panel paintings and prints throughout his career, Hegyi is best known for his mosaics and stained glass windows. He reinterpreted mosaic art, which had previously been considered a monumental genre, and began to create mosaics on the scale of a tableau. His subject matter was extremely varied, inspired as much by natural phenomena, architectural masterpieces and memories of his travels abroad as by figures from sagas and poems.

Szentendre was an important stage in the development of Hegyi's art, where his constructive vision was honed in the summer months in the company of his master, Jenő Barcsay. He exhibited his works from this period at the European School's exhibition "Sight and Vision" in the winter of 1948. 'We thought the conservative art was over, we wanted something new... that's how we got into the European School's sphere of attraction. I felt, I knew, that they were the future, that they represented the new, the revolutionary. It was through the College library that I was introduced to Picasso and the French, Russian and German greats of modern art. It was then that I first saw Vajda paintings at Endré Bálint's. Vajda's visions are a shocking and authentic insight into the horror of fascism, a poignantly perfect artistic representation of inhumanity [...] I think it was not only in my subjects and motifs, but in my commitment to artistic tradition, in my constant experimentation and search for something new, that I became a true Szentendre painter,' he later said. After the European School was banned, his surrealist paintings of Szentendre were never seen again until Hegyi's exhibition at the Műhely Gallery in 1985. Until the mid-1960s, people only appear in his works on exceptional occasions, but after that, one of his favourite motifs was schematic heads and figures, especially in his mosaics. His current work shows Hegyi's editing, organising and arranging the elements of reality. In addition to the European Schools, the influence of Klee's art can be mentioned here.