Painter Judit Reigl
was born in 1923 in Kapuvár, and has been living and working in France since 1950. She is one of the
rare artists of Hungarian origins who is recognised in the United States
, and whose
oeuvre uniquely combines the traditions of European and American abstraction
. Her paintings figure in the largest and most important public contemporary art collections: the
Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA) and the
Metropolitan Museum
in New York, the
Tate Modern
in London, and the
Centre Pompidou
in Paris. The exhibition arranged at the
Ludwig Museum Budapest
attempts to present the
varied problematics
and
various stations of this extraordinary life oeuvre
, both thematically and chronologically.




Visitors might have been captivated above all by Judit Reigl ‘s story, that after
multiple unsuccessful attempts
, she
finally crossed the Iron Curtain in 1950
, and following a several months journey, arrived in France. In 1954, her artist colleague
Simon Hantaï
, also living in Paris, introduced her to
André Breton
, the
father of surrealism
, who then invited her to participate at an exhibition at L’Étoile scellée, the gallery of the Surrealists. At first, Judit Reigl declined the invitation, yet accepted it a couple of months later. The visual programme of the Surrealists, however, proved to be too restricted for Reigl.

She tried to
break out from the exclusively figurative mode of expression
prescribed by Breton. And it is in this attitude where the true essence of Judit Reigl’s life oeuvre dwells. She
burst out of the illustrative framework
early on, and already in 1952 began experimenting with
automatic gestural abstract symbols
that resembled writing. Her breakthrough from figurativity simultaneously meant a step beyond surrealism. Beyond these formal questions, contrary to the surrealists, Judit Reigl regards the painting not only as an
unconscious imprint of the psyche
, but also as a
surface that receives corporeal energies set free
, which she uses as an implement of the body battling with the material of the
unmixed elementary colours
(yellow, black, blue, red) of industrial paint.




Breaking out from figurativism and from formal limits results in attaining
“emptiness”
, from which
something new can be born
. An
equal liberation of psychic and physical energies
leads to an ecstatic creative state. Outburst (1955−1958), Centre of Dominance (1958−1959), and the series, Mass Writing (1959−1965) are supported by these two mental motifs. The
mental motif
takes on
formal and sculptural weight
in the moment when these series refer to
cosmic vistas
and
laws of physics
– force fields, the Big Bang, or to kinetic, centripetal, centrifugal and gravitational energies.

The Experience of Weightlessness (1959−1965) and the corpus entitled Guano (1958−1965) indicate the closure of this first cycle. With the latter, the artist brings out
ruined canvases
, which protected the floor of her atelier for years from
dripping paint
, and on whose surfaces the convoluted material and alluvia visualise a kind of
depth of time in relation to her dynamically painted earlier series
, constituting a
“mausoleum” of the memories
of all the gestures rendered up till then.

In the painting oeuvre of Judit Reigl, it is in
1966
when the figure returns at first, indicating the
overture of a new cycle
. In the series entitled Homme (Man, 1966−1972), we are confronted with
floating human bodies
,
body parts and aerodynamic torsos
depicted vertically in yellow, red and blue, on monumental white or black grounds. Freeing herself from this figurative cage for the second time, the artist once again attains the emptiness from which something new can be born: in the series entitled Déroulement (Process, 1973−1985), music as an experience conducive to
attaining ecstasy
provides the
impulse
,
rhythm
and
structure
.

In the painting ensemble entitled The Art of the Fugue, inspired by
Bach’s music
, Reigl employs a n
ew technical method of painting the canvas on both sides
. She applies
glycerophtalic paint
on one side, which seeps through to the other side, and which she then covers with
acrylic paint
. Since glycerophtalic paint repels acrylic, the acrylic peels off the motifs that have been created by the glycerophtalic paint that had seeped through, and it can only cling to the
untreated parts of the canvas
. In this way, chemically, physically and visually, the ensemble of the leading voice and the accompaniment comes into being. Entrée-Sortie (Entrance-Exit, 1986−1988) represents the
closure of this second cycle
. With
large, dark monochromatic surfaces
, the artist
extinguishes every sign
referring to
movement
,
dynamics
or
gesture
, and by employing the motif of a doorway, she arouses the sensation of anticipation. It is as if Reigl has painted a door so that the human figure appearing on her canvases again after 1988 could stroll through it.