Ilka Gedő

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Ilka Gedő (20 May 1921 in Budapest— 1985) was a Jewish Hungarian artist. Her work survives decades of persecution and repression, first by the fascist regime of the 1930s and 1940s and then by the communist regime of the 1950s to 1989.

Gedő died on 16 June 1985, at the age of 64, a few months before her discovery abroad. The scene of the breakthrough was Glasgow where the Compass Gallery presented her paintings and drawings in 1985. Since then, many of her works passed into public hands: in addition to St. Stephen’s Museum, Székesfehérvár, Hungary and the National Gallery of Hungary, many foreign collections acquired them (The Jewish Museum, New York, Yad Vashem Art Museum, Israel Museum Jerusalem, the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum and the Kunstmuseum (Museum Kunst Palast) of Düsseldorf.

[edit] Career

Her father taught at the Jewish grammar school of Budapest, and some of the leading Hungarian writers and artists of the times were among the family’s circle of friends. She started her artistic career in the late 1930’s visiting private art schools.

The anti-Jewish measures and the upheaval of the war came, but Gedő carried on creating a significant body of graphic works. As a Jew, in 1944 Gedő was imprisoned in the Budapest ghetto, and she drew a remarkable series of ghetto drawings. She avoided the horror, instead representing isolated people of puzzlement, uncertainty and despair in her drawings.

After the war Gedő gained admission to the Budapest Academy of Arts, but she decided to leave the Academy and until 1949, when she stopped artistic work, had created a huge body of drawings that can be divided into series. She created self portraits which, through their sheer honesty and self-exploration, claim the viewer’s attention. These works are drawn in a way that evokes straightforward physical reality and emotional sensitivity at the same time. Another series, Tables, is devoted to drawing a delicate, small table with an abundant variety of lines and shades, exploring the endless possibilities of representing the visual world. The third series resulted from repeated visits to the Ganz Factory in Budapest. A combination of silver and gold with pastel crayons transposes the factory rooms into almost mythical spaces.

An interval of 15 years devoted to bringing up a family divides the oeuvre of this artist. Ilka Gedő presented her drawings in 1964 in her own studio. This exhibition gave her the impetus to resume work. In the 1960s, Gedő started to paint in oil. Her creative method follows the call of the instincts but does not forget the discipline of the intellect. She made “two-step” paintings. She first drew a sketch of her composition, prepared a mock-up and wrote the name of the appropriate colours into the various fields. She prepared a collection of colour samples, and she wrote where the colour would go in the places where they were ultimately applied. She never improvised on her paintings; instead she enlarged the original plan. On her paintings the strength of cold and warm colours appears to be equal. She created her paintings slowly, amidst speculations, recording the steps of the creative process in diaries so that the making of all the paintings can be traced.