Published to coincide with the exhibition 'György Gordon (1924 – 2005) A retrospective’ (19 October 2016 - 25 February 2017).

Detailed Description

With an essay by James Hamilton. Foreword by Nathalie Levi.

Published by the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, October 2016.

24pp plus cover, 210 x 210 mm

25 colour images (inc. cover), 1 black and white image

***

György Gordon was born in Hungary in 1924 and gained his diploma in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest in 1953. His life was thrown into turmoil by the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, and he fled to England. More than three decades later he was still inclined to play down the effect of the flight from his homeland, but the evidence to the contrary lies in the intense and expressive qualities of his work.

 

Arriving in London with only a few clothes and speaking very little English, he managed to find work, and after a few years he moved to Wakefield in West Yorkshire, to take up a post as Lecturer at the College of Art in 1964. Dedicating himself to the nurturing of up-and-coming young artists, his own work has been, while not ignored, not as widely recognised as it deserves. Gordon took early retirement from teaching in order to have the time to fully explore all the areas of interest that he had been forced to contain over these past years.

 

His paintings are recognisably in the European Expressionist tradition, sombre tones creating huddled and distorted images of the human form, with their appearance of isolation and inhumanity. Gordon has exhibited widely, including the National Portrait Gallery and Budapest Fényes Adolf Galleria, and his work is now in public and private collections in Britain, Europe, Australia and the USA.