El Kazovszkij: Bálványállítás

El Kazovszkij Aranyfal with provenance – provenance from the Rome area, 1996

The tested unendurable covering,

If there's nothing, speak up; if there's not a single word of yours:

neither flesh nor spirit creature

and defenseless, abandoned.

(El Kazovszkij: The order of things)

Opening: 10 September 2025 at 20:00.

Opening: Gergye Krisztián: Hattyú – dance performance

Curator: Gábor Kozák

El Kazovszkij (1948‑2008) was simultaneously a painter, set and costume designer, poet and performer, who was

By the end of the forties his abandoned body of work was elevated to the status of one of the era’s most eminent figurative painters. Though literature was closest to him – quoting his own words, “the language even runs in my veins” – the legacy that emerges from radically different genres and aesthetic qualities reveals the inexorable creative intensity of an interdisciplinary artist, a quality that has earned unanimous recognition and consensus from contemporaries across the most varied artistic disciplines.

The posthumous exhibition organised at the Hungarian National Gallery in 2015‑2016,

The Shadow of the Survivor, with 30.000 visitors, was one of the most popular solo exhibitions.

El Kazovszkij Dancer with Two Accompanists II., 1982

His artistic career began in the late 70s with the Dzsan-panoptikum performance series, which combined classical approaches to painting and sculpture with performance, bringing together music, text and movement (dance and mime). His surreal compositions, recalling stage sets and performance spaces, grew from this approach; angels, Venuses, ballerinas, swans, the Fates and mummy-shaped figures became characteristic motifs. Classical mythology concerned him above all. His work repeatedly explored his personal relationship with death, the conflict between desire and everyday life, vulnerability and a general sense of helplessness—subjects that marked his life. From the 80s onwards, the figure of the dog became a recurring motif in his paintings: both a symbol of the soul or embodied conscience, and a metaphor for tragic fate and survival.

El Kazovszkij Desert Beach II., 1985

El Kazovszkij was transsexual, living by the modern definition, although he did not put that into practice.

For the artist, the question of gender identity—he said it was what most influenced and defined his life—was not only a field of intimacy but also the starting point of self‑identification, thereby becoming one of the main channels of his art. Fluidity, the dynamism of fluctuating gender roles, and the tension woven through body and soul that comes with it—alongside the rejection of binary categories—constantly pointed towards the search for self‑identity. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of this is the artist’s thesis statement in the interview he gave to Júlia Váradi in 2005: *“I did not speak against the world myself, but we spoke against each other.”*

By means of an uncompromising attitude, a raw all‑artistic vision, and linguistic radicalism.

Their works were uniquely authentically capable of speaking about people's most secret desires, repressed emotions, and fears. Their legacy, beyond depicting the intense drama of progressive‑erotic roles assigned to the bodies’ traditional iconography, highlighted the gender

the petty snide quibbles about stereotypes, and the essential self‑evaluation and unshakable self‑consciousness that are of supreme importance in the search for identity – all of which are the smallest building blocks of an artist’s or aspiring artist’s soul.

This exhibition brought together works from collections whose owners were, for the most part, personally and closely acquainted with the artist. We sought to bridge the tension between the scale of the oeuvre and the modest space of Godot Gallery by drawing as broadly as possible from the artist's work, across periods and media. The selection includes copperplate engravings and collages from his student years, early lyrical works, pieces from his mature period in the 80s and 90s, a box work, an appliqué work developed from an installation, two works from Fríz I., which filled the Karinthy Salon, and two works from Fríz II., a summative series made shortly before his death. What makes this exhibition special is that every work is available for purchase. Alongside El Kazovszkij's artworks, visitors can encounter the artist's own words: excerpts from numerous interviews conducted with him between 1987-2008 offer his views on conceptual art, the Sex Pistols, silence, life after death and travel, as well as the themes for which he is widely known.

The exhibition is open until 15 November, from Tuesday to Friday between 10 and 14, and on Saturday between 10 and 13.

Godot Gallery,

11‑13 Bartók Béla Road.