Untitled (1960s)

Vera Trőster originally wanted to study painting at the College of Fine Arts, but her application was rejected time and time again (presumably for political reasons), so she ended up studying ceramics at the School of Applied Arts. Little is known about her life, but it is certain that she and her friends were constantly roaming the countryside and villages in search of old relics and folk art objects that were not properly valued or recognised. She also painted abstract pictures as early as the 1960s. In 1970, Iván Dévényi wrote in the Vigilia newspaper, 'The painter paints her non-figurative works with broad, fierce brushstrokes and passionate colouring reminiscent of Rouault, Kokoschka, Béla Czóbel and Hungarian folk art (Psalter, Variations in Pink, etc.). Vera's pictorialism is not broad, but experienced, sincere and unconcerned with artistic fashions. We look forward to her journey with confidence'. The exhibition was opened by Margit Anna at the House of Technology in Esztergom. The following year, Trőster was displayed at the Csepel Gallery, where Éva Körner gave a speech at the opening. In 1972, at about the same time as many other Hungarian avant-garde artists, Trőster left Hungary and emigrated to Switzerland. To put part of her vast and extremely valuable collection of folk art in safe and capable hands, she donated it to the art collector Ernő Kolozsváry. Her abstract works still produced in Hungary are in prestigious collections. 

The introduction to the catalogue of the Csepel exhibition classifies Trőster's paintings as subjective visionary painting, and highlights in particular her "colour orgies", to which the forms are completely subordinated. As her large watercolour painting on view here shows, Trőster was most influenced by lyrical abstraction, particularly the works of Kandinsky in the early 1910s, and the art of Jean-René Bazaine and Alfred Manessier. The latter also designed stained glass windows, as Trőster's abstract paintings are quite easily imagined in this genre. Watercolour was Kandinsky's and lyrical abstraction's favourite technique. Although Trőster's paintings are dominated by warm colours (yellows, oranges, greens), she creates disharmony with the blue framing the central motif and the thick, deep green outline separating the colour forms. In Hungary, lyrical abstraction was influenced by the activities of the Zugló Circle (Sándor Molnár, László Molnár, Imre Bak, István Nádler, Endre Hortobágyi, Pál Deim) in the late 1950s and early 1960s.