Critique

Ervin Ditrói Israeli Daily Newspaper in Hungarian, 1990 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 byblack 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 alonely brass. The pictures are usually more-figure compositions but theycome into play as a still life in many cases. The figures are not definedvery strictly so the compositions with figures sometimes fade into a stilllife. There are figures reminiscent of people that are totally static and thereare stirring compositions where the line itself is stirring. By combining thefigures a swirl comes into being and at the same time, without our beingable to distinguish the figures one by one, it is obvious and clear that it is acrowd of people. They are sitting, moving people or people creating ascene. These...

Jean-Christophe Amman Review of the Exhibition Advanced Retrospective Review of the Exhibition Advanced Retrospective In the summer, I read Isaac B.Singer's Shadows on the Hudson. The novel is set in New York immediately after World War II.The people there who fled from Nazi persecution are condemned to fail. But out of that failure, they manage to draw unusual and surprising strength. What is an ordered, straight-lined life compared to one that is characterised by breaks and constant reorientation?Born in 1948, Arp Kovacs spent his youth in Transilvania, Romania.He studied at the art schools in Neumarkt and Klausenburg, was teacher for eleven years, emigrated to Israel in 1985 and has lived in Frankfurt since 1994.The work by Arp Kovacs is characterised by these breaks in his collective biography and the lives of those whom he consciously experiences and articulates as emotional contradiction in his paintings.Arp Kovacs has no homeland and is at home everywhere and nowhere.Condemned to...

Gideon Ofrat Kovacs and Delilah Kovacs calls them "figures" and "human beings" but we see warnen _ almost solely women.Heavy black outlines define their round breasts, as do the organic and wave-like stream of curves, which flow and intertwine one figure with the other. With this linear cord, Kovacs binds his warnen together into one cluster of Eros. One second glance, we note that his inanimate objects - bottles, fruit, flowers - also stem from the erotic world.Kovacs endeavours to fix the erotic firmly in its place, the contour is merely a stage in the painting process which finally ends in turning the woman into a sculpture of stone; interring the living and dynamic in the timeless and eternal stillness. There are suggestions in the work of this painter who studied sculpture (in the course of 14 years of art studies in Romania), of the monumental sculpturesque women of Maillol, Henry Moore and others: the Goddess-Woman.Kovacs'...

Viorel Igna Exhibition of Arp Kovacs Romanian Daily Newspaper, Maramaros 1979 Coming back to an old tradition the Museum of Sziget houses in these days the paintings and graphics exhibition of Arp Kovacs. The exhibited works reflect Arp Kovacs' periods of affirmation, successively expressed by the plasticity of chromatic rhythms that leads to stylistic unity. The derivation of the artistic space is reflected by the contrast of shapes, placed alternatively on the canvas. The shapes are treated organically whilst the geometry of shapes can be inseminated. The unfinished contours suggest an interior organisation of the artistic expression in which the essence is stressed by a crowd of shapes and by an attentive use of colour patches. An attentive watch helps to enter the universe of the painting, thus discovering the sense of material in movement; the dynamic struggle determines the shapes with a tenderness that cannot be put into words.From the corner of a workroom the...

Eva Lendvay Surprise in an Exhibition Article from a Romanian Newspaper about the exhibition in 1967 The painter whose pictures people talk about in town (as well as the audience and the critics) is twenty years old. 1 get to know this fact only after having visited the exhibition: the pictures show a greater maturity concerning form handling.Arp Kovacs sets off "armed to the teeth" on conquering new ways, the painterly and human world; in his pictures we can feel strongly that his intention is to tell people something, to make an opinion about the world. This intention is the one that has to attain full growth in his works. The two­ element composition of "Setting off'', the interesting monochrome of the self-portraits and the original composition of the "Three mothers" - just tomention some examples - tell us about a philosophical depth and struggle. The paintings testify about a great professional expertise and about a well-founded...