Michael Denholm
Opening Speaker
Zsuzsa Kollo Exhibition Dark Tales Wild Boys Savage Girls
Colville Street Art Gallery
19th June, 2009

Jean Leymarie once wrote, of ‘Balthus’ art, that some artists are providentially singled out as bearers of the Golden Bough. They abide, pilgrims of eternity, keepers of the spirit, servants of beauty, traversing their time and all its transitory flux and reflux, set on a steady course, intent on timeless values…’. Zsuzsa Kollo, like David Nash, is more this type of artist. She reminds us of how important migrants have been to art made in this state, with artists like Dusan Marek, Jezey W. Michalski and Udo Sellbach.

Kollo is influenced, in her arcadian scenes of family life in her art, by the patterning she remembers from her childhood in her native Hungry and by the symbols present in Catholicism such as the lamb and the shroud. Her art in general, and in particular in her Dark Tales: Wild Boys Savage Girls exhibition, is noted by her compositional skill and concern for beauty, for its fecundity and for its use of light as in her painting Dark is the Night reminding us that revelation and enlightenment, as mystics know, comes out of the darkness. Thus View, her El Greco influenced take on the view of the Zinc Works from her house, is good in her compositional skill in the way she positions the wintery tree in this painting and reminds us of how important the tree if properly cared for is in facing the massive challenge humanity is confronted with with industrial emissions and global warming. Her art has an affinity, in this exhibition, with that of the fairy tale in literature, with archetype and myth, and the European tradition of the lost child in nature and has much wisdom in it as in, in Winter Fruits, the necessity to preserve the fruits of nature.

The characters she portrays in this exhibition, such as the two daughters in The Orchardist’s Daughters, and her untitled portrayal of a young girl, are at ease and at peace both with nature and with such wild animals as wolves. They do not attempt to dominate or exterminate nature and can, as in her untitled portrayal of a girl, have an evocative beauty. Her concern with the dark side of nature reminds us of the importance that the night journey, and immersion in nature, has its creativity. As in Mithraic ritual, light comes out of the primordial darkness.

What is depressing about many exhibitions that you see now is how abysmal they are. This is hardly surprising in a society where the word culture is used to describe the behaviour of people no matter how appalling it is rather than its proper meaning of being well educated and refined, where there is next to no criticism of art, where the life of the mind is considered to be of little value, where aesthetics is not taught and much art has simply become interior decoration, and often not very good interior decoration at that, or concepts that are not realized and are badly expressed, and where there is a silly emphasis on self expression rather than an unwavering devotion to the acquisition of skill. Many artists simply settle on a commercial, facile formula rather than, like Cezanne, aiming at the seemingly unattainable in the hope that one day it may be within their reach and betray what talent they may once have had in their search for comfort. Art, to be of much magnitude, requires much struggle and then the ability to disguise that struggle so that, on a superficial level, it appears to be effortless. It is, of course, very easy to embrace careless, unskilled art as it does not require skill, immense perseverance and struggle, little or no reading and any contemplation, and the culling of inferior work. It is refreshing however that there still exist artists like Kollo for whom beauty and craft are still important. She has a commendable concern with technique in her art and has obviously benefited from the education she received at a young age in Hungry. Kollo is undoubtedly one of the best painters in this city. That she has not been acclaimed as such is probably due to the upside down nature of our society where the trivial is often celebrated and the worthy marginalized and where there often is a lack of authenticity in art. Her painting The Late Harvest reminds us of the importance of fulfilling your talent and not rushing or betraying it. Thus Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece To The Lighthouse, who is bent on immortality, is ridiculed for her painting. But, on the last page of her novel, she fulfills her life’s work. She had had her vision. “It became a miracle, it became an ecstasy that she had lived.’