Represented artist
Szikora Tamás
festészet · objekt · rajz
Painter and object-maker whose oeuvre repeatedly returns to the motif of the box in drawings, paintings and monumental objects.
Katalin Néray, 1987:
I encountered Szikora Tamás's flagship box object under very mysterious circumstances – in the basement of the artist's studio on Fegyvernek Street, given that it no longer fit into the studio house. Until then I had only seen other works depicting boxes at the Pince Gallery in Óbuda, with their old certificates bearing signatures and melt‑seals, and delicate sketches that at the time reminded me of Gérard Titus‑Carmel's method.
The motif that came alive on the poorly lit platform was this two‑metre thick cardboard object, and it looked like a sci‑fi set.
I immediately asked Szikora to exhibit this otherwise disassemblable installation, with its accompanying drawings, at the São Paulo Biennial.
This 1985 happened, unfortunately none of us were able to see the mentioned Biennale – we only heard indirectly from the organisers that the Hungarian contribution had been successful. The Hungarian audience also saw the outcome at the Salamon Tower in Visegrád and at the Bartók 32 Gallery in Budapest.
This task rekindled Tamás Szikora’s creative spark, and he kept “boxing” even further. He created a new, even more monumental object than before, and expanded the theme to his painting practice, which he had abandoned for years. In just a few months, eight to ten boxed images poured from his hand: heavy, ranging from burnt‑sienna to black, compositions that suggest both the liberated joy of painting and its disciplinary ferocity.
When my colleague Frank János and I went into the studio to see the finished material, I felt the same welcome excitement that I had when I first saw the box on the floor. Something good had arisen again, and the positive emotions of preparing for the exhibition pushed Szikora into demanding, concentrated work.
Passuth Krisztina, 1993:
The boxes cannot always be opened. Some can, others cannot; some remain untouched throughout, others rather expose the secrets they hold, the system amassed inside, while yet others simply flaunt the secrecy of their lid and cannot be approached any closer.
Boxes in space, boxes on the plane, playing with space and the three dimensions in an illusionist realism, projecting the nonexistent shadow with disappointing fidelity, so that the object can later sharply detach from the wall, unframed, and establish the boundaries of its own autonomous world.
Gellér Katalin, 2001:
His first independent period saw him linked with the international current of expressive painting; he worked with French and Spanish‑Catalan masters, and then forged a version of neo‑geometry that, in terms of minimalist art and motif choice, is somewhat close to arte povera. From 1991 his commitment to the spatial order he had established has accompanied him throughout his career; the 20
The artistic paths of twentieth‑century Hungarian creators are now regarded as somewhat fated: they work on shaping a single image and its variations, weaving in many influences from Renaissance perspective studies to the legacy of Russian and Hungarian constructivism.
His initial motif turns into geometry, and lifting the painterly work to an individual structure is not only a high‑order intellectual achievement but also a leading contemporary example of vigorous shaping and ever‑renewing pictoriality. In his works the marks of expressive painting occasionally appear as well, which Ernő Kállai once regarded, with great conviction, as one of the main character traits of Hungarian masters.
This same quality also characterises the new mode of tradition‑seeking perceived among the masters of the generation born in the forties: the rewriting of motifs and structures rooted in the century’s painting traditions to their very limits.
Respect for the regularities of optics gradually slipped away, and at first in geometric forms emotion was still within reach, alluding to different human fates and evoking the milieu; but even here it was the new order of spatial arrangement and the subjectivisation of perspective that reigned.
A hallmark of his character is that, even in a world he perceived as ruined and hopeless, he did not abandon the construction; within fragments, amid the accretion of everyday life, he created a visual order that presents the whole, and even made visible its illusionist, manipulable aspects.
Tolnai Ottó, 2007
Just as, for example, Tamás gathers old leather bindings, cardboard, especially the old documents, the bullet‑proof cardboard of old book bindings, his paper dolls, his boards, his parchment paper… Even Kecskemét is gathering the material for him, the pictures for him, he tells.
And me, the calligrapher, it is precisely this that interests me the most, but I am forging a path as a art critic too. Yes, the feverish statement from Tamás, who are they collecting, what are they collecting for him, yes, I must travel to Kecskemét, I must meet the collectors and the bearers of the materials of the boxes and the pictures… My most loyal helper, says Tamás, is Veron, Szalay Veronika from Veron, the best, the Munkácsy‑prize‑winning Hungarian paper restorer… But the Kecskemét picture framer, the young sculptress, the German teacher who is a conductor, also gather for me, he continues Tamás… They bring marvelous mature cords, boards, leather, rag‑paper, full of karst, cuts, mature wounds, scribbles, filled with lead‑ball toy heads, darkness, absolute wrinkling, like the backgrounds of Zurbarán, like Hantai (Simon)’s pictures… But I also received sugared and domino boxes, and a woman’s hat box from the Dead Sea was brought to me, my God, a woman’s hat box from the Dead Sea, and I let him himself begin to tell how all that became a picture, how that woman’s hat box from the Dead Sea turned into a crematorium, into a pyramid shape, I feel it, I have, here the secret of that art has been caught…
Works at byGodotEarlier professional biography
Full biography and exhibition history
Tamás Szikora
1943 Nyíregyháza
Studies, artistic activities:
1962-68 Kalinin Politechnikum, Közmérnöki Kar, Leningrad
1970-76 Hungarian School of Fine Arts, Painting Department
1977-80 Derkovits Scholarship
1982 – 91 Esztergom Teacher Training College lecturer
1985-86 the invited lecturer of the Institute of Industrial Arts, 1990‑től, is a member of the Szentendre Old Artists' Colony.
1992‑93 he works at the Parisian Cité des Arts with the support of the Pollock‑Krasner Foundation.
From 1994 each year he spends two to three months in Paris at the invitation of the Cité des Arts.
1997 also wins the Pollock‑Krasner Foundation scholarship for the second time; he teaches a course at the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts.
1999 wins the two‑month scholarship of the Roman Hungarian Academy
2000 works in Rome as a representative of the Hungarian Institute.
Awards:
1992 Painting Grand Prize, Salgótarján Eger International Watercolour Biennale: the jury award; Salgótarján VI. Drawing Biennale: grand prize; International Pastel Biennale: Saint Quentin Town II prize.
1994 Munkácsy Prize
Pollock‑Krasner Foundation’s Outstanding Scholarship, 1997
the scholarship of 1999 the Roman Hungarian Academy
2006 Pro Urbe award, Herczeg Klára award
Individual exhibitions (selection):
1978 András Jósa Museum, Nyíregyháza
1980 Studio Gallery, Budapest; Tornyai János Museum, Hódmezővásárhely
1984 Hungarian Association of Architects (with Tibor Nádler), Óbudai Pince Gallery, Budapest
1988 Culture at the Springerschlössel, Vienna, ___ 1989 Qualitas Gallery, Hyatt Atrium Hotel, Budapest
1992 Művésztelepi Galéria, Szentendre Reife 22 Gallery, Stuttgart Espace 31, Issy les Moulineaux, Paris, Paris Art Fair, Cologne
1993 Hungarian Institute, Paris; Paris Saint‑Stephen’s Palace Museum, Székesfehérvár; French Institute, Budapest; Dovin Gallery, Budapest
1994 House of Arts, Pécs
1995. Galerie Boycott, Brussels, Bruessel
1996 Várfok Gallery, Budapest – Budapest Gallery, Lajos Street exhibition house, Budapest
1997 EveArt Gallery, Budapest
1999 Hungarian Institute, Paris, Szinyei Salon, Budapest
2000 Illárium Gallery (with Tölg-Molnár Zoltán, Hermann Zoltán), Budapest
2001 Hungarian Cultural Institute, Stuttgart Godot Gallery, Budapest Objects, Contemporary Art Museum – Ludwig Museum, Budapest St Stephen’s King Museum, Székesfehérvár Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
2002 City Gallery, Nyíregyháza Hungarian Institute, Stuttgart, Germany
2003 Szikora 60, Godot Gallery, Budapest
2005 Dobozok, Aulich Art Gallery, Budapest
2006 Studio Gallery, Budapest Plug, Contemporary Art Fair, Budapest (Godot Gallery stand)
Group exhibitions:
1983 Young Hungarian artists, Town Hall, Münchengauting, Germany
1984 Interart, Poznan, Hungary, Poland
Galeri Stengods, Malmö, Sweden _1985 Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo XVIII.
1986 ICAF ’86, London International Art Fair, Los Angeles
1987 Graphic Artists' Colony, Makó
1988 IX International Painting Biennial, Slovak National Gallery, Košice Contemporary Hungarian Visual Arts, National Gallery, Prague National Museum, Bratislava Gallery Eremitage, Berlin XIII Watercolour Biennial, Eger
1989 Europe – Asia, Art Biennale, National Museum, Ankara; Contemporary Hungarian Art, St Anne’s Chapel, Passau, Austria
1990 Unique Drawing Biennale, Salgótarján VII Triennale, Lalit Kala Galleries, New Delhi Homage to El Greco, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest XII National Small Plastics Biennale, City Gallery, Pécs XI Multiple Graphic Biennale, Miskolc II International Impression Triennale, Ernst Museum, Budapest Treffpunkt Galleries, Klagenfurt Fair, Austria
1992 Salon 92, Grand Palais, Paris II International Pastel Biennale, St Quentin, France Medzynarodowe Triennale Rysunki, Wroclaw, Poland Galerie Philippe Gand, Paris
1993 Art Expo, Budapest Exposition collective, Cité des Arts, Paris
1995 Jubilee exhibition of the Makó Artists Colony, School of Visual Arts, Budapest Panorama, Contemporary Hungarian Sculpture, Exhibition Hall, Budapest II Esztergom Pastelle Biennale, Esztergom
1996 The art of the nineties, Csók Gallery, Székesfehérvár Constructivists, Nagyatád
1997 Oil, canvas, Exhibition Hall, Budapest
1998 Boxes, Shells Art Club, Budapest Collection from the Ludwig Museum’s holdings, Ludwig Museum, Budapest 144–7460, Selection of works purchased by the Hungarian National Gallery over thirty years, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest
1999 Farewell to 20 from the twentieth century, Selection from the Hungarian National Gallery holdings, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest Escher exhibition, Vigadó Gallery, Budapest, Malom, MűvészetMalom, Exhibition by Szentendre Scholars, Hungarian Institute, Rome Forty‑two Hungarian artists, Hungarian Embassy, Washington
2000 Majdanek, International Drawing Biennale, Lublin, Poland
2001 I am delighted to be able to be here, Pécs, Modern Képtár, Dear Masters!, St Stephen King Museum, Székesfehérvár 2003 Jubilee exhibition at the Old Artists' Settlement in Szentendre, Vigadó Gallery, Budapest
2004 Kulturhalle, Tübingen, Germany (Bartl, Jávor, Konok, Madarassy) Drawings, ArtMill, Szentendre
2005 in pairs and alone, a selection from Kozák Gábor’s collection, Godot Gallery, Budapest; Kogart Salon, Kogart House, Budapest; Önarckép, Várfok Gallery, Budapest
2006 Titkok kertje, Gödöllői Iparművészeti Műhely, Gödöllő Feszített vásznak, MűvészetMalom, Szentendre
Works kept in collections<|channel|>
Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest
Contemporary Art Museum – Ludwig Museum, Budapest
Ministry of Culture, Budapest
Petőfi Literary Museum, Budapest
St Stephen the King Museum, Székesfehérvár
Deák Collection, Székesfehérvár
Modern Gallery, Pécs
Ferenczy Museum, Szentendre
Jósa András Museum, Nyíregyháza
Déri Museum, International Trade Bank of Debrecen, Budapest
OTP Bank, Budapest
AB-Aegon Insurance, Budapest
Roman Hungarian Academy, Rome
Cité Internationale des Arts archive, Paris
Public works:
Vásárosnaményi Cultural Centre, 1977
Esztergom Teacher Training College, 1980
Fischer Collection, Reinlingen, 1997
Corona Guesthouse, Nyíregyháza, 1997
His works are held in important private collections:
Fischer Collection
Vass László Collection
Merics Collection
Herway Gay Collection
Dovin Gallery Treasury Collection
Nádasdi Collection
Gábor Kozák Collection
Godot Gallery
Békefi Collection
Sinkovits Péter Collection
Antal – Lusztig Collection
Bélai György Collection
István Márkus Collection
Bibliography:
Pataki Gábor: Preface to the catalogue. János Tornyai Museum, Hódmezővásárhely, 1982.
Katalin Néray: Preface to the Hungarian section. 18. International Sao Paulo Biennial catalogue, 1985.
– Néray Katalin: Szikora Tamás dobozairól. Preface to the catalogue, Dorottya Gallery, Budapest, 1987.
Frank János: Exhibition opening. Manuscript. Dorottya Gallery, Budapest, 1987
Pataki Gábor: Box pictures. Art 1988/2, 56-57. p.
Lóssza Lajos: Box pictures, in Tamás Szikora’s workshop. Art 1989/9, 44‑47. page.
Hudra Klára: Szikora Tamás. In Hommage á El Greco – Tisztelet El Greconak. Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, 1991., 54. old.
Sík Csaba: Dear Tamás! New Art 1992/6, 56-58. old.
Preface by Csaba Sík and Gábor Pataki. Catalogue. Nyíregyháza, 1992
Gellér Katalin: From painted object to painted relief. New Art 1993/12, 42-45. p.
Krisztina Passuth: Boxes – Boîtes. Bilingual (Hungarian‑French) catalogue. Hungarian Institute, Paris, 1993.
Sasvári Edit: Painterly Synthesis. The exhibition of Tamás Szikora at the St. Stephen the King Museum in Székesfehérvár. Balcony 1993/1, 34 – 35 page.
György Várkonyi: A chapter of the History of a Found Metaphor (Tamás Szikora’s exhibition at the Pécs House of Arts). Árgus 1995/1, 104‐107 page.
Orsolya Kovács: Szikora Tamás exhibition. House of Arts, Pécs. Balcony 1995/2, 2. p.
György Várkonyi: Opening of the exhibition. Manuscript. Spiritusz Gallery, Budapest, 1995 February
Csaba Sík: Letter to Tamás Szikora. New Art 1996/6, 56-58
Katalin Gellér: Preface to the catalogue. Budapest Gallery, Lajos Street exhibition house, Budapest, 1996.
Gellér Katalin: Szikora Tamás. Oil on canvas. Műcsarnok, Budapest, 1997., 274-275. p.
László Százados: Boxworld. Balcony 1997/4-5, 36-38. old.
György Szőngő: Exhibition opening. Szinyei Salon, Budapest, 1999
March Gardner Karl Pfahler: Opening of the exhibition. Stuttgart Hungarian Institute, 2001.
István Bizerr: Szikora. Life and Literature 2001. June 22., 27. p.
Sinkó István: This is boxing! Artwork 2001. October, 2. page
Kata Krasznahorkai: Objects, catalog, Ludwig Museum, Budapest 2001.
Sinkovits Péter: A megzavart árnyék, Új Művészet 2001 October, 14–17 p.
Tollnai Ottó: Thomas Szikora, Atelier 2002/1, 83-85 volume. *UpDate*, art magazine, Paris 2002 March, 189-193 volume.
The Merics Collection, Catalogue, Kaposvár 2002, 156 pages.
György Várkonyi: Works of Tamás Szikora, Moving World 2004/4., 30. old.
Modern Hungarian Picture Gallery, Pécs 1955-2004., catalogue, János Pannonius Museum, Pécs 2004., 152. old.
City Picture Gallery – Deák Collection, catalogue, Székesfehérvár 2005., 192 pages.
Kovalovszky Marta: Masterpieces of modern Hungarian painting 1896-2003., Corvina Publications 2005., 200. p.
expositio I., Borsos Mihály photographs, Vince Kiadó, Budapest 2006., 198. old.
Exhibition moments
Images from a shared history
Solo and group exhibitions
Exhibitions at Godot 18
A New Beginning – From Collection to Collection 6.0Új kezdet – Gyűjteményből gyűjteménybe 6.0
11 September 2026 – 31 October 2026
Godot Galéria
Godot Online Kamara Aukció – kiállítás
30 August 2021
Godot Galéria
Tamás - Válogatás Rátfai Attila gyűjteményének Szikora Tamás képeiből 2021.05.19 - 06.12.
19 May 2021 – 12 June 2021
Godot Galéria
Feltámadás júniusban2020-06-04 — 2020-06-20
4 June 2020 – 20 June 2020
Godot Galéria
ART AND ANTIQUE 2020 – a Godot Galéria részvétele
5 March 2020
Millenáris
#g20 - A Godot 20 éves jubileumi kiállítása - 2019-09-05 — 2019-10-12
5 September 2019 – 12 October 2019
Godot Galéria
Nagykarácsony - Kortárs műtárgyat karácsonyra II.
25 November 2016 – 18 December 2016
Godot Galéria
ART MARKET BUDAPEST 2016 – a Godot Galéria részvétele
13 October 2016
Millenáris
Kortárs műtárgyat karácsonyra!
26 November 2015 – 20 December 2015
Godot Galéria
Szikora Tamás: Eltűnő dobozok
14 October 2015 – 15 December 2015
Godot Galéria
black&white
22 May 2013 – 22 June 2013
Godot Galéria
Zacc?
19 January 2011 – 5 March 2011
Godot Galéria
Téli tárlat
28 November 2007 – 22 December 2007
Godot Galéria
Kortárs magángyűjtemények X.: Bélai György gyűjteménye
31 January 2007 – 24 February 2007
Godot Galéria
PLUG 2006 – a Godot Galéria részvétele
23 November 2006
Műcsarnok, sátor
Kortárs Magángyűjtemények VII.: Kozák Gábor Gyűjteménye - Kettesben és egyedül
7 September 2005 – 1 October 2005
Godot Galéria
Szikora 60
23 November 2003 – 28 November 2003
Godot Galéria
Szikora Tamás
13 June 2001 – 29 June 2001
Godot Galéria