László Lakner

László Lakner (Hungarian: [ˈlaːsloː ˈlɒknɛr]; born April 15, 1936, in Budapest) is a Hungarian-German painter, sculptor and conceptual artist.

In 1976 he was awarded the Bremen "Art Prize of Böttcherstraße" and in 1977 he was invited to the documenta VI in Kassel, where he exhibited several works from the fields of painting, drawing and book objects.

In the same year he received the German Critics' Prize and worked during 1981-1982 with a scholarship from the Berlin Senate in New York at MOMA P.S.1 art studio and gallery, at the same time as the Essen sculptor Carl Emanuel Wolff.

In 1979, Prof. Paul Vogt, the director of the Museum Folkwang, initiated the appointment of László Lakner as a lecturer of painting at the Essen University of Applied Sciences.

His students from this period include, among others, the cabaret artist and photographer Dieter Nuhr, painters Dirk Hupe, Jürgen Paas, Eberhard Ross, photographer and stage designer Johannes Gramm, Günter Sponheuer and Frank Piasta[5][6] Since his beginnings in the 1950s, Lakner's work has moved with great flexibility and ease among many artistic forms, such as realistic and object-free representations in painting, photography, textual work, film, objects and sculptures.

Whilst demonstrating his virtuosity through painting, Lakner inspired associations between the history of art and contemporary political issues (see Seamstresses listen to a speech by Hitler[24][25][26][27][28]).

Lakner also closely examined the appropriateness of the artistic media used in Eastern European countries with their respective social reality.

[29][30][31][32][33][34][35] Lakner also created images that could be attributed to Pop Art (see Rose, 1968,[36][37][38][39] Mund-Tondo / Mouth-Tondo, 1968, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest[40][41][42]).

He also experimented with assemblages (see Fugitives, 1966, Hungarian National Gallery[43] and Letter to Barbara, 1964), monochrome paintings,[44][45] posters[46][47] and conceptual art;[48] they incorporated sometimes humor.

Here, Lakner examined the limitations and possibilities within his realistic representations, creating a lasting theme that he continued to work with in Germany.

It is regarded as an outstanding political statement on the situation of the artist in the repressive Hungarian regime (see Self-portrait with self-timer, 1970, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

[60][61][62] This is the continuation of the previously mentioned usage of quotes in new artistic contexts, as well as an innovative exploration of using written text as a subject in paintings.

This liberates the viewer to see them from a purely aesthetic perspective; as colour and shape[63] (see Cézanne's Last Letter, 1975, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam).

He wanted "Black Milk", the words from Paul Celan's poem Death Fugue, "written big on a wall with a flamethrower.

"[66] In Isa Pur, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, he cites the oldest Hungarian Funeral Sermon and Prayer written in Latin script: “Behold, we are dust and ashes”.

This technique resulted in pictures with graphic entanglements and lines above the color ground (see work group of splitted images on a box-like deep canvas, 1994).

On the monument for the Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti, Lakner shows his inner impressions and feelings, created by the poems, on the surface of an imaginary book, which is cast in bronze.

In addition, representational images were also created with a new examination of the classical art of painting (see Berenice according to Edgar Allan Poe, 2004 – 2010).