Judit Reigl

Judit Reigl, who worked and lived in France, is known worldwide for her surrealist and abstract expressionist work. Her paintings can be found in several significant collections, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Tate Modern in London. Műcsarnok hosted her first retrospective exhibition in Hungary in 2005, followed by further retrospective exhibitions displaying the artist's work at Modem in Debrecen and later at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. Ybl Creative House Buda organized her last solo exhibition in 2019. In 2011, the Hungarian State recognized her work with the prestigious Kossuth Prize.

Reigl immigrated to Paris in 1950 to fulfil her artistic potential in complete freedom, where she joined the Surrealists through contact with Simon Hantai. Her early work thus bears the signs of Surrealism. Her creative journey in the following years led her to Lyrical Abstraction; she later became acquainted with the proposals of American Abstract Expressionism as well.

In 1965, Reigl injured her elbow in a non-fatal car accident. The plastered hand's struggle against gravity inspired the image cycle titled The Experience of Weightlessness. Recovering from her injury, the new theme of the Human unfolded in her work: liberated from the hindering weights, massive bodies breaking towards the sky stretched the format of the canvases. She worked on her most extended series, Process, from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. Her painting titled Hydrogen, Proton, Metal is also part of this series. The combination of repellent paints with different grounds and unusual materials (metal dust) resulted in unique surfaces that inspired the artist for many years.

 

Kata Vizi