There are many varieties of the colour brown. A brown ochre is a lighter, golden dash

on a brown surface. The structure will be emphasized by black outlines here and there.

When we place a turquoise somewhere, which would not be noticed in another place

but here it is very strong like a lonely brass. The pictures are usually more-figure

compositions but they come into play as a still life in many cases. The figures are not

defined very strictly so the compositions with figures sometimes fade into a still-life.

There are figures reminiscent of people that are totally static and there are stirring

compositions where the line itself is stirring. By combining the figures a swirl comes into

being and at the same time, without our being able to distinguish the figures one by one,

it is obvious and clear that it is a crowd of people. They are sitting, moving people or

people creating ascend. These figures are not defined clearly, their heads and limbs

painted as a hint. The painter lets the imagination flow free without presenting clear

abstraction. In this way this picture has the effect only few pictures have: you can look

at it again and again, it does not become boring after one or two weeks. It may create

associations, and one discovers new forms within the composition as you can watch the

play of a fountain for along time, the base remains the same all the time but details are

different from time to time. The Kovacs pictures have an effect like this.

The first-rate characteristic of the picturesque side is the harmony of colours. In the

same picture the colours play up with each other and together in a certain scale but at

the same time the painter uses a dash of color here and there that has the same effect

as the sound of an unexpectedly appearing instrument in a Haydn symphony. (Or, sorry

forthe comparison, it gives the same feeling as the raisins in the cake). The imagination

of this young artist seethes; he seems to create these compositions with ease. Some

pictures are lively and stirring and some work with moving and live lines in spite of being

static. It would be difficult to give a picture a title or a topic but all of them have their

simile. It is a dream world in a way. By telling it a dream does not seem real but when

one is part of a dream it is as real as the everyday life seems to be. It disappears when

we sleep as the dream disappears when we wake up. A perfect characteristic of these

pictures is being decorative. When we are not looking for content, a concrete subject in

them, when we see them as a collection of dashes of colours, they are very pleasing,

yet attractive. Apart from the still-lives there are no pictures that can be attached to a

certain time, space. In this sense these pictures are abstract. It cannot be said whether

they were painted in Israel, San Francisco or Paris. Although they were all painted in

Israel and are works of a newly immigrated young artist, they are no asphalt

ethnography or exotic folklore. They are abstracted from time and space but not from

today’s time. Concerning the form it is absolutely the result of the age named modern by

us. I say this because it is obvious that every person considered his age modern. Cicero

or Julius Caesar surely did not speak about himself as “we, the ancient people”. Neither

did Maimonides say: “we are here in the middle age, so we should behave as people in

the middle age do.” Arp Kovacs does not say anything but he behaves, he paints like a

modern painter, a contemporary but he will not be untrue to the traditions of the old

masters and the facts he learned about colours, forms and history of arts from his

teachers or other masters.

His paintings: nostalgic dreams about a harmonious world.