Vida Gábor

(Hungarian, 1937-1999)

The antique shop

Footnotes

Vida Gábor's paintings provide a view into a world that disappeared during the course of the twentieth century. His touching and often humorous depictions of his native Budapest, with its ageing citizens often in crowded shops or studios surrounded by precious objects, combine a sense of humour and nostalgia that is perfectly matched by his self-taught technique more akin to the nineteenth century than the late twentieth.

Gábor was from a well educated background, his mother was an opera singer and his father an architect. He was a child prodigy at the flute and was classically trained at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy under Ferenc Hochstrasser. He would go on to become a Professor and flute soloist in the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1961 he left his professorship and started a goldsmith apprenticeship, following his passion of drawing, sculpture and antique restoration. Many of his subjects are drawn from these worlds.

Gabor's paintings look back at an 'Old Europe' with its cultural heritage littered around dimly lit interiors. The figures are caricatures, colourful light-hearted characters in the nineteenth century genre tradition. It could be interpreted as a form of escape from the harsh realities of Communist Hungary. His paintings are a fiction, with no reference to anything that threatens the happy illusion based in Budapest's proud past.

The support and medium of the present lot are typical of Gábor, who is well known for preparing a perfectly smooth ground before applying his thinned medium. The result being no evidence of the brush is left in the paint, and a smooth enamel like effect is achieved.