Database

Fehér László

Fehér László

Born March 17 1953, Székesfehérvár
Lived in Budapest
Lived in Tác (3)

László Fehér is a Hungarian painter and visual artist, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts, and a recipient of many research fellowships abroad (including Rome). He is a representative of hyperrealistic painting whose attributes he has modified to include current topics: reflection on social themes, Jewishness etc. In 1990 he participated in the Venice Biennale. Eighteen years later the Liechtenstein Museum in Vienna arranged a retrospective exhibition of his work. He is a winner of a number of awards and was appointed the ambassador of Hungarian culture in 2007.


painting, photorealism

1971

László Fehér attended Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola/ The Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts between 1971 and 1976. In the middle of the decade he started focusing more systematically on provocative photorealistic painting, adding a specific social and critical accent. His series of paintings called Brigade Records (1975) reflected the debility and emptiness of an ID photo. He proceeded in the same way in his works titled Aluljáró I/ Underpass I (1975), Földalatti/ Underground Railway (1976), and Aluljáró II/ Underpass II (1978), respectively, which represened a formally perfect depiction of the triviality of everyday life, the gloominess that was so typical for the second half of that decade.

1977

The formal representation and the topics of Fehér's canvases evoked photographic moments. They were specific due to the atypical cut-outs and shifts in perspective, with the domination of black and white, although some of them copied the radiant chromaticity of ORWO photographic film. In fact, they were an alternative to the family photograph style of the 1960's (Életkép/ Genre, 1979).
[László Fehér] (solo exhibition, Kincsesbánya)


1979

[László Fehér] (solo exhibition, Székesfehérvár)

1980

The series of paintings with Jewish topics was a certain parallel to the family photographs, a reflection of Fehér's personal affiliation. In 1980, Fehér worked on a canvas titled LT/ Diptichon/ LT/ Diptych (1980), a highly contrasting photorealistic painting in a black and blue contrast, depicting a man of Jewish origin, a Jewish flag and a detail of an inscription in Hebrew. Diaszpóra/ Diaspora, the last of his black-and-white paintings in the photorealistic style, originated in 1982

1982


1983

Between 1983 and 1985, Fehér also dealt with stylized landscape painting. For a certain time he more or less gave up photographic concreteness, reducing his palette to the combination of red, black, white and ochre. This reduction abated in the mid decade
[László Fehér] (solo exhibition, Budapest)

1986

In 1986, Fehér won a scholarships and stayed in Rome. The change of environment was manifest in the increased chromaticity of the palette and canvas monumentalization (Róma/ Rome, 1986
Received grant from Római Magyar Akadémia
[László Fehér] (solo exhibition, Székesfehérvár)


1988

His return from Italy resulted in quite a dramatic reduction of chromaticity. Fehér restricted the range to the triad of basic colours, yellow, black and white. While yellow typically forms the background, black is used for the architectonic and – together with white – also the figural staffage. Fehér's process gradually became strictly codified, it was used in almost realistic variants Presszó (Café, 1988) and Este 1953-ban (Evening in 1953, 1988), as well as in canvases from 1990 and 1991, tending more and more markedly to transcendence (Testvérek/ Brothers, 1990
Képek 1983-1987 (solo exhibition, Graz)
[László Fehér] (solo exhibition, Budapest)

1989

In 1990, László Fehér participated in the Venice Biennnale, where he presented this current collection (Emlékműnél/ Memorial, 1989
Fountain
Fountain (painting)
Steps
Steps (painting)

Dialógus II. [Franz Pichlerrel] (solo exhibition, Budapest)


1991

At the beginning of the 1990's, Fehér returned to a black-and-white palette, also using a range of grey and silver. He also revised the original photographic approach

1993

Received award from The Munkácsy Mihály Prize

1995

In mid 1990's, Fehér engaged in making portraits of artists, friends, famous personalities (Gabor Bachman, 1995

1996

Mítosz, Memória, História (group exhibition, Budapest)

1997

At the end of the 1990's, the dramatic feature of Fehér's palette attenuated, one of the manifestations of this was his preference for a soothing combination of blue and grey tones. His canvases became populated with more figures (Réten/ Meadow, 1997

1998

László Fehér (solo exhibition, Budapest)
Ungarn Avangarde im 20. Jahrhundert (group exhibition, )


2000

Received award from Kossuth-díj
László Fehér (solo exhibition, Budapest)
Millennial serie of exhibitions in the Mucsarnok (group exhibition, Budapest)
Art in Central Europe 1949–1999 (group exhibition, Barcelona)


2002

Situation Ungarn - Kunst vor und nach der Wende (group exhibition, Berlin)
Re-Conciliations (group exhibition, Budapest)


2004

László Fehér (solo exhibition, Budapest)
Passage d´Europe (group exhibition, Saint-Étienne)
technoreál (group exhibition, Dunaújváros)

2005

Europe in Art (group exhibition, Prague)
Laszlo Feher – A Selection (solo exhibition, Budapest)
Feszített művek. Válogatás a Ludwig Múzeum gyűjteményéből I. (group exhibition, Budapest)

2006


2007

Retrospective exhibition of László Fehér (solo exhibition, Budapest)
Body language - Antal-Lusztig collection II. (group exhibition, Debrecen)
Hungarian Art (group exhibition, Bratislava)

2009

Ungarische Kunst der 1970er bis 1990er Jahre aus der Sammlung der Neuen Galerie Graz (group exhibition, Graz)
A tolerancia művészete (group exhibition, Bratislava)
Hommage á El Kazovszkij (group exhibition, Budapest)
A kép képe (group exhibition, Budapest)
arc, pofa, ábrázat (group exhibition, Budapest)



2012

Faces (group exhibition, Budapest)
Reloaded - A Selection From The Collections Of The Kovács Gábor Art Foundation (group exhibition, Budapest)
What Is Hungarian? (group exhibition, Budapest)
From Tizian to Warhol / Olomouc Museum of Art 1951-2011 (group exhibition, Olomouc)


2015

Siliconvalse. Hungarian Reality (group exhibition, Brno)

2016

Fehér László│Papírmunkák (solo exhibition, Budapest)

Muzeum umění Olomouc 2011-2024