Benes Jozsef – Yellow Figure

Jozsef was Born in Bajmok, present-day Serbia, in 1938. He finished secondary school in Subotica and organised his firstsolo exhibition. After studying architecture for two years, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. He worked as a teacher of painting in Senta (Vojvodina) and travelled abroad, for a study visit to Paris. He founded and ran a gallery in Senta where he presented works by Yugoslav and Hungarian artists created in an art colony he organised. He appeared on the international scene in 1973 when he exhibited in London. He left Yugoslavia in 1978 for political reasons, living first in Szeged and then in Kecskemet. Jozsef is the founder of Art Association workshop and the organiser of winter Art Show and Days of National Contemporary Poetry, whose publications he illustrates. He has had about thirty individual and eighty group exhibitions, and he is also active in drawing, graphic production, illustration and sculpture. David is a member of the Association of Hungarian Painters. Here is what he says of his own work: “Although they describe him with many epithets, the contemporary painter is a realist of his own life. Human body is a tom, bruised, grotesque figure, an apocalyptic vision, a fear of death, a protest. It is the fate of a helpless humanoid creature, a man without landscape”.