This exhibition focuses on a little-known yet decisive aspect of György Kurtág’s oeuvre: the composer’s network of relationships with the visual arts and the artistic milieu that emerges from it. The exhibition presents Kurtág’s personal and intellectual connections with contemporary artists, teachers, friends, and students, which also appear in correspondence, dedications, homages, and collaborative works. The works on display are linked by a constant crossing of boundaries between genres, media, and cultural politics; their guiding motif is freedom.
Within the exhibition, Kurtág’s drawing practice occupies a central place. His abstract gestural drawings were not created with a representational intention, but as imprints of emotions, bodily movements, and momentary states. The selection, spanning from the 1950s to the present day, includes works by Judit Reigl, Endre Bálint, Júlia Vajda, János Kass, Sári Gerlóczy, Dezső Tandori, Georgios Tzortzoglou, and Judit Kurtág. The works offer insight into a creative environment in which music, visual art, literature, and performative gesture are closely intertwined.
The exhibition was initiated by Gergely Dubóczky, artistic director of the Szeged Symphony Orchestra; it is curated by art historian Dr Anna Váraljai, assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Szeged.