Galambos, Tamas (Bridgeman Studio)
Creator details
- Name
- Galambos, Tamas
- Nationality
- Hungarian
- Biography
- Tamas Galambos, born in 1939, is of a Hungarian artist generation whose creativity in youth was largely affected by looming controls of a dictatorship. His work is awaiting thorough (re)discovery, even if during the politically mellowing 1980's his versatile outsider art began gaining recognition home and abroad. He is a multifaceted creator, with various categories and detours within his ouvre. His idiosyncratic nature-paintings, sometimes reminiscent of large canvases richly woven across with the brush, represent his magical realism. This virtuoso, intentionally pseudo-naïve folkloristic technique meant a ‘politically correct’ opportunity for him to exhibit from the late 1970’s, avoiding the censorship of Soviet-controlled Hungarian authorities. Meanwhile, his paintings bearing social criticism could not be exhibited before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. These political images were mainly painted in a pop-art imbued vein, a unique style for the Eastern Bloc. Besides his images on nature and his political commentary, his traditionalism-informed works also constitute a significant category, with themes of mythology and religion as focal points. These images often display skills of a Gothic icon painter, the latter style being a major influence on the artist from the 1960’s onward. Irrespective of the theme category, his pictures are seldom short of a tinge of irony. Thereby he makes a point of addressing the common baseness in human nature, be it an elusive animal portrait of sarcastic self-personification, a composition of wry political symbolism or a daredevil’s attack on middle-class prudery.
