Dear Art Fans,

This is Tibor Egyed’s third personal exhibit in Marosludas, where he himself, personally doesn’t need to be introduced, since we are gathered today in his hometown.

By accepting the honor of opening his exhibit, I feel that I am in a unique position, since I’ve followed the artist’s path more closely. Tibor and I have known each other for over ten years. Tibor was my student for a while at the Academy of Visual Arts in Cluj at a time when I was trying to introduce the younger generation of artists, who may not have been so keen on the subject, to the past of the history of art. Years later I ran into Tibor at a book publisher in Cluj, then again, in Budapest, where Tibor was the graphic designer, editor and tender of three of my books. I’ve seen his struggles first hand while he was trying to keep up his own publishing house, somehow being able to keep it afloat from one crisis to the next.
The thing I have always liked in Tibor was his ineradicable optimism, the way he bore all the bad strokes of fate, all the misfortune, somehow managing to pay off his debts, while struggling for the bare minimum. But the main thing that made him so likeable in my eyes was the fact that no matter what life threw at him, he never gave up his ambitions, his creative self, his artistic rank. During my long years as art historian, while I was following my old students’ lives from afar, I’ve seen numerous examples of young artists who, not being able to cope with all the hardships of the artist’s life, tired out, gave up, burned out and left the art world to make a living in another way.
The book design, what Tibor had done from the beginning, is also part of the world of graphic art. In this line of work Tibor had numerous successes already. I especially enjoyed his illustrations for Mihály Babits’ book, “Jónás” he made while working for the Kriterion Publishing House. His drawings – and, honestly, this is the highest praise – are fitting to the great classical writer, Babits’ work.
The sequence of lithographs made as illustrations to Géza Szőcs’s recently published work, Limpopo, are good enough to stand on their own, and they were exhibited as a separate graphic cycle. I cannot forget his work on the book about Tasso Marchini, the monography of the painter with a tragic and short life, book that Tibor didn’t illustrate, but as a designer followed trough in an exemplary manner.
Leaving the world of books, in his work as a painter and graphic artist, Tibor Egyed has been trying to find his own style by sieving his own lessons from of the contemporary artistic movements. This created world, his own voice, since it is his very own, personal style that came out of it, his very own artistic language, brought him successes in his exhibits. He had personal exhibits in Cluj, Budapest, Tg Mures and other cities and towns of Transylvania, out of which, if I’m counting correctly, this is the twelfth.
We cannot expect from Tibor, or from any other artist of his generation,
well-painted, pretty still lives, interiors emitting serenity and calmness, or dreamy landscapes. The world is different today, his artistic world, as well as the real world around us, is filled with violence, challenges and dramatic, occasionally hopeful changes. Tibor’s works represent a sensitive soul’s reaction to everything that is happening around us. He can be objective as well as metaphoric in the same time. Let me explain how all of this can be present in the same time. Tibor worked at the Mezőpanit (village near Vásárhely – Tg Mures) artist retreat camp between 2000 and 2002. While there, he noticed the interesting, very old, gates that were still present in front of the village homes. He transcribed them into paper, copying them, just like we used to do with coins as kids transferring the image into paper by rubbing the paper with pencil. The result is very unexpected. It is a real picture, cannot even be more real, still we feel exactly that the physical object represented, the gate, is way more than it seems. It has become a forgotten piece, a shadow image of a disappearing world.
His photo installation, “Healing Attempt”, was born from a similar idea. The body fights the illness, it wins and gets rid of the devastating disease.
With this I will return to Tibor Egyed’s never ending optimism that I have mentioned before. He sees and represents life’s infinite fountain in the life-giving sun, in the mother and women represented in nudes in numerous variations.
Here, in Ludas, his hometown, let’s wish him further success and endurance and I also wish you all a happy and blessed Holiday Season.

Jenő Murádin,
translated in English by
Fromm Emese Réka

Born in Marosludas (Ludus), Romania, in 1969, Tibor Egyed presently lives and works in Budapest, Hungary.
He debuted as an artist in 1986, at the age of 17, with a personal exhibit held in the Cultural Center of his hometown, Ludus. He graduated the University of Fine Arts from Cluj, Romania, in 1998, with a diploma in graphic design. Fresh out of college he becomes member of the Romanian Artists’ Union (UAP).
Later on, after moving to Budapest, he also becomes member of the Hungarian Artists’ National Union (MAOE), then of Hungarian Artists’ Union of Budafok, Hungary (ARTER). He is also a founder member of the International Hungarian Children’s Museum (MGYV). In 2007 the “Napsziget a Muveszetekert” Cultural and Fine Art Foundation recognizes him with the Buza Barna award for best illustrations of the year.

Over the years he had personal exhibits in Budapest, Tirgu-Mures, Cluj, Baraolt, Phoenix, Tirnaveni and Ludus.
He has been present in the book publishing industry as a graphic artist with works published by major publishing houses like Kriterion (Romania), Magvető (Hungary), Mercutio (Hungary), the magazine At the Danube and his own Publishing House called Tibera.

His art is an original synthesis of the movements of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism. Gone through the Renaissance’s spirituality, his artistic language arrives to the “fantastic”, postmodern Dadaist surrealism. He sympathizes with the Fluxus movement founded in America in 1962 by George Maciunas. Members of the Fluxus group feel that the aesthetic needs to be subordinated to the ethic and the artistic experience is manifested as a presence or a sign of the energy of real life. Fluxus is often described as Intermedia, a blend of different artistic media and disciplines, something that Tibor Egyed firmly believes in.

Tibor Egyed defines himself as a contemporary artist who uses a very vast field in his visual artistic expressions, while he studies the interaction between the different artistic mediums.

Klárai Zombor,
translated in English by
Fromm Emese Réka