Prayer (1961)

Miklós Somos attended the Academy of Fine Arts between 1951-1957, where his teacher was Géza Fónyi. He participated in national exhibitions from the mid-fifties. His individual style, which Géza Perneczky called lyrical realism, was related to constructivist painting and developed in the early 1960s. His suggestive paintings are characterised by a strong plasticity in relief, a tight structure, closed simplified forms and a reduced use of colour. In his works, landscapes, nudes and portraits, he goes beyond the specific features of reality. His paintings can be compared to those of Jenő Barcsay, Endre Domanovszky and Béla Kondor. In 1963 he also made ceramic paintings in Hódmezővásárhely. In the early seventies his painting was renewed. Instead of gloomy scenes, he painted cubo-surrealistic spaces and still lifes with a colourful palette, and by the 1980s his works had become even more relaxed. 

'I like painting faces, but I didn't choose my ancestors from the great portrait painters. Because I'm not interested in the individual, but in the man himself,' says Miklós Somos. His series of portraits, with their excited brushstrokes and a facture that sometimes approaches physical decomposition, are reminiscent of the world of icons, and are most closely related to the icon portraits of Béla Kondor in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Compared to them, however, Somos's surface is rougher and seems to apply layers of paint in a mosaic.