Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, September 23, 2023: István Orosz, a Hungarian painter, printmaker, illustrator, graphic designer (#1913)

Saturday, September 23, 2023

Artist of the Day, September 23, 2023: István Orosz, a Hungarian painter, printmaker, illustrator, graphic designer (#1913)

István Orosz (1951) is a Hungarian painter, printmaker, graphic designer and animated film director. He is known for his mathematically inspired works, impossible objects, optical illusions, double-meaning images and anamorphoses. The geometric art of István Orosz, with forced perspectives and optical illusions, has been compared to works by M. C. Escher.

Orosz studied at the Hungarian University of Arts and Design in Budapest as a pupil of István Balogh and Ernő Rubik. After graduating in 1975 he began to deal with theatre as a stage designer and animated film as animator and film director. He is known as painter, printmaker, poster designer, and illustrator as well. He likes to use visual paradox, double meaning images, and illusionistic approaches while following traditional printing techniques such as woodcutting and etching. He also tries to renew the technique of anamorphosis. He is a regular participant in the major international biennials of posters and graphic art and his works have been shown in individual and group exhibitions in Hungary and abroad. Film director at the PannóniaFilm Studio in Budapest, Habil. professor at University of West Hungary in Sopron, co-founder of Hungarian Poster Association, member of Alliance Graphique International (AGI) and Hungarian Art Academie. He often uses ΟΥΤΙΣ, or Utisz, (pronounced: outis) (No one) as artist's pseudonym.

During the last two decades – when most of the works were made – the activities of the poster designer, the printmaker, the illustrator, and the film director have completed each other. Many motive, stylistic features, technical solutions appeared in all of the media and for Orosz it seemingly did not cause any problem to cross the borders of the different genres. When he was drawing a poster usually he did it with the preciseness of illustrators, when he was illustrating a book, he did it with the narrative mood of filmmakers, if he was animating films, sometimes he used the several layers approach of etchers and engravers and for prints he often chose the emblematic simplifying way of depiction of posters. If we call him only a poster designer based on his functional prints, we narrow down his field of activity, we go closer to the truth if we associate him with „postering" as a way of thinking, or if we call his many sided image depicting ourselves and our age as the poster-mirror of István Orosz.

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