It is a rare opportunity to keep the oeuvre of an important artist together in some form after they have died. Luckily, Tibor Csernus’s oeuvre is one of those few exceptions, as following his death, in the spring of 2009, the Kovács Gábor Art Foundation acquired his estate, with works from a period of fifty years, including over 50 paintings, some 300 aquarelles, pastels and charcoal drawings, book illustrations from all periods of his career, and countless sketches.
A significant portion of the oeuvre comprises model drawings and drawn nudes, a selection of which can now be seen at the Tihany exhibition. These works were often studies for paintings, and are now informative mementos of the creative process—of the relationship between the artist and his models and characters. Csernus’s models meet each other, their environment and the viewer not through mediators, but directly.
The model has always been of key importance in visual art. Not so much as a source image as the visual elaboration of an idea, which is often fresher and more expressive in itself than the completed work for which it was made. This is particularly true of Tibor Csernus’s art: he sometimes borrowed his figures from magazines, taking them out of their context; from the start, he would pose his live models with the final composition in mind. The decisive factor was always the end; meanings borrowed from elsewhere are also well-calculated elements of Csernus’s works.
The Art of Tibor Csernus in images:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTuw_FGRGM8
